Curtain Fig Tree is a heritage-listed tree at Curtain Fig Tree Road, Yungaburra, Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. It is one of the largest trees in Tropical North Queensland, Australia, and one of the best known attractions on the Atherton Tableland. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 3 December 2009.
Growth of a strangler fig
The Curtain Fig Tree is of the strangler fig species Ficus virens. Normally these figs germinate on top of another tree and try to grow roots into the ground. Once this important step is accomplished, the fig will grow vigorously, finally kill the hosting tree and then grow on independently. In this case, the hosting tree tilted towards a neighboring tree, and the fig also grew around that one. Its curtain of aerial roots drops () to the ground.
Although these figs kill their hosts, they are an epiphyte which basically feeds from the ground, unlike a parasitic plant which feeds from the sap of the host plant/tree.
History
Far North Queensland's famous Curtain Fig Tree (Ficus virens) is located in a Curtain Fig National Park about one kilometre north of the town of Yungaburra on the Atherton Tableland. It is estimated by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service to be at least 500 years old. Associated with organised tourism on the Tableland since the 1920s, the tree has been important in the development of the Cairns hinterland as a major tourist region in Queensland.
Since the 1890s the tropical vegetation of the Atherton Tableland has been known variously as scrub, jungle and more recently, mabi rainforest. The term "rainforest" was coined in 1898 but it was not a descriptor applied to the tropical vegetation of the Cairns region until the 1970s. Mabi rainforest was classified in the 1960s by ecologists, based on its physical characteristics and species composition. The name "mabi" is derived from a local Aboriginal word for the rare Lumholtz's tree-kangaroo, the largest mammal found in this rainforest. Logging, agriculture and urban development on the Tableland has resulted in significant loss of mabi rainforest and it is listed as endangered under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
Early non-indigenous visitors to the Atherton Tableland often viewed the scrub in Romantic terms, fascinated by the dense and luxurious vegetation, especially the enormous trees covered with vines, and delicate and unusual ferns and orchids. A number of early twentieth century tourist attractions in the region, such as Fairyland (1907) and the Maze (1923) at Kuranda developed reflecting this view of the scrub. Other early commentators saw the fecundity of the scrub in a less favourable light, referring to it as gloomy, dank, and swarming with insects.
Ways of seeing the rainforest began to shift in the 1920s from the Romantic view of nature as a collection of fascinating curiosities and grand and sublime landscapes, to an ecological paradigm which views nature as a systemic interrelationship between all living things including humans, and their environment. In the 1930s the North Queensland Naturalists' Club lobbied for language change, seeking to replace "scrub", often used in a derogatory manner, by "jungle", in a bid to change community attitudes to the rainforest. Valuing the rainforest gained momentum with the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
Giant strangler figs such as the Curtain Fig Tree were considered to be wonders (or even freaks) of nature. Strangler figs are a parasitic species of tree that develop when the seed of a fig germinates on the top of another tree and then tries to plant its roots in the ground. Once the root system is established, the fig grows vigorously, finally killing the host tree and then growing independently. The unusual formation of the Curtain Fig Tree was created when its vertical roots strangled the host causing it to fall into a neighbouring tree on a 45 degree angle. The extensive aerial roots of the strangler fig then dropped from the oblique angle of the fallen tree to the forest floor, forming a "curtain". North Queensland strangler figs were portrayed photographically in The Queenslander from as early as 1896 and on postcards soon after 1900.