SUMMARY

• Main Authors: Tree Fern Dicksonia Antarctica, Gregory L. Unwini, Mark A. Hunt
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Achievements; Unwin; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.563.2617; http://www.aff.org.au/Unwin_Dicksonia_final.pdf

In recent years, commercial horticulture has provided an incentive to harvest mature Dicksonia stems from private and crown forests in Tasmania in order to supply Soft Tree Ferns at low prices domestically in Australia and to develop a very small market at high specially prices for export to Europe. Extraction and marketing of Dicksonia antarctica for export raised new issues of conservation and management of the native fern flora in Australia. At the same time, such an opportunity provided new avenues for research on the application of propagated growing stock and commercial silviculture of the tree fern within managed understoreys of fast-growing Eucalyptus plantations. Project Objectives (i) Preliminary investigation of regeneration biology and microclimate requirements for growth of Soft Tree Fern in native moist forest and in clearfelled plantation sites, notably to establish silvicultural requirements of the tree fern as a commercial understorey crop in Eucalyptus plantations, presently being widely established by large scale private forest companies in northern Tasmania. (ii) Development of suitable techniques for nursery propagation, micropropagation, species provenance and site tolerance trials, suitable to complement and progressively to replace existing salvage of mature Dicksonia from field harvest, prior to reduction of the private forest clearance programme for plantation establishment. Unwin & Hunt 2 (iii) Initial silvicultural trials of Dicksonia as an undercrop, specifically to place nursery stock of spore-propagated Dicksonia in young Eucalyptus nitens plantations of northern Tas.