Australia's Deadliest Tree

Thanks Australia !

AUSTRALIA HAS A PARASITE believed to be the largest in the world, a tree whose greedy roots stab victims up to 110m away. The Christmas tree (Nuytsia floribunda) has blades for slicing into the roots of plants to steal their sap. The blades are sharp enough to draw blood on human lips. They cause power failures when the tree attacks buried cables by mistake. Telephone lines get cut as well.

The Christmas tree is indiscriminate, stealing juice from almost anything green – grasses, sedges, carrots, weeds, vines, shrubs, eucalypts. It sometimes attacks its own roots by mistake, and fallen twigs as well. When one of its roots meet another root it forms a collar of tissue around it, like a swollen wedding ring, and a hydraulically operated blade forms inside that. Each tree attaches to hordes of victims.

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