What is celery-top pine?
Celery-top pine is a Tasmanian conifer with flattened, leaf-like stems shaped like celery leaves. It grows in cool temperate rainforests and is valued for its strong, pale timber.
Celery-top pine, Phyllocladus aspleniifolius, does not have true leaves on mature plants. Instead, it has flat, fan-shaped branchlets called phylloclades that carry out photosynthesis, giving the tree its celery-like look.
It grows slowly and can live for several hundred years, reaching up to about 20 to 30 metres tall. It is found mainly in western and southern Tasmania.
Timber
The timber is strong, durable and pale, and it has been used for boatbuilding, furniture and flooring.
It belongs to the podocarp family, an ancient group of Southern Hemisphere conifers whose ancestors grew on the supercontinent Gondwana. Relatives of the genus grow in New Zealand, New Guinea and Southeast Asia.
Young celery-top seedlings have needle-like leaves before developing the flattened branchlets of mature trees. The species can grow in the shade of other rainforest trees, slowly reaching the canopy over many decades. It is common along walking tracks in the Tarkine and around Cradle Mountain, and walkers can spot it by its distinctive branchlets.
Did You Know?
Celery-top pine is one of several conifers found only in Tasmania, alongside Huon pine and King Billy pine.