Nurse Stump

Nurse stump in Goldstream Park, Victoria

The rain forest is a rich, green vertical column of rapidly growing life. Here some of the biggest trees in the world thrive in the moderate, wet climate. Year round the growth and the life continues, carpeting everything in a thick, luxuriant moss. Everywhere you look there are things growing on other things.

The nurse stump above is of an ancient Western red-cedar. Hundreds of years old when it died, the wood is so rot-resistant that it could last hundreds of years more as a stump. Before the cedar stump breaks down it may be engulfed by the new cedar growing on it.

Nurse logs, nurse stumps, and abundant epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants) - everything is growing on everything in the coastal rain forest.