page_title: Mount Bartle Frere
section_title: Vegetation
hierarchical_section_title: Mount Bartle Frere / Environment / Vegetation
caption_attribution_description: Linospadix minor near the top of Mt. Bartle Frere, Queensland, Australia
context_page_description: Mount Bartle Frere is the highest mountain in Queensland at an elevation of 1,611 metres. The mountain was named after Sir Henry Bartle Frere, a British colonial administrator and then president of the Royal Geographical Society by George Elphinstone Dalrymple in 1873. Bartle Frere was British Governor of Cape Colony at the outset of the Zulu Wars. The Aboriginal name for the mountain is Chooreechillum.
  It is located 51 kilometres south of Cairns in the Wooroonooran National Park southwest of the town of Babinda on the eastern edge of the Atherton Tablelands. Mount Bartle Frere is part of the Bellenden Ker Range and the watershed of Russell River.
  The foothill to summit is entirely covered by rainforest, ranging from typical tropical rainforest in the lowlands to low cloud forest at the cooler summit, where temperatures are up to 10 °C lower than on the coast. Despite the treacherous climb, reaching the top offers an expansive view of the surrounding area.
context_section_description: The high altitude and rainfall of the mountain create conditions for a number of vegetation types growing on the poor granitic soils. The lower slopes support lowland tropical rainforest (complex mesophyll vine forest) with a great diversity of large leaved trees, climbers, epiphytes, palms and ferns. With increasing elevation the rainforest changes to a less diverse smaller leaved notophyll type. At elevations above 1000 m, simple microphyll vine fern forest is found with species such as the purple kauri pine (Agathis atropurpurea), Elaeocarpus ferruginiflora and pimple bark (Balanops australiana). With further increases in altitude, increasing exposure and cloud contact create conditions ideal for the formation of cloud forest (simple microphyll vine fern thicket); many of the species are rare or endemic and most trees are shrouded in mosses and other bryophytes.
  The stunted tree Eucryphia wilkei found in the cloud forest above 1500 m elevation on Mount Bartle Frere exists nowhere else on earth and has relatives in the cool temperate rainforests of Tasmania and Chile. Other notable species include the mountain aspen Acronychia chooreechillum, Trochocarpa bellendenkerensis, Polyscias bellendenkerensis, the vine Parsonsia bartlensis and Australia's only native rhododendron, Rhododendron lochiae, which grows on top of the large granite boulders or as an epiphyte in the cloud forest canopy.  Eidothea zoexylocarya was initially discovered on the slopes of Mount Bartle Frere, which holds its main populations.
  In some areas near the summit the granitic soil is so leached of nutrients by the very high rainfall that rainforest plants are replaced by heath plants such as Acrothamnus spathaceus, Acrotriche baileyana, ferns, (Gleichenia species), carnivorous sundews (Drosera species) and the orchid, Dipodium ensifolium.
caption: Linospadix minor, a palm species on Mount Bartle Frere
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