) to provide photographs from my early files to a picture page (Regular Features - 'The Bolton Files' ... I didn't name it!) and I have put in a picture of Phyl taken at the Town Crier Folk Club in 1971 ... mini-skirt and all!
I guess the "Chinese Toon" would be related to the Toon, which is an Indian tree ... the name is a Hindi word and it is called 'Cedrela Toona'. Early authorities thought the Australian tree was the same but modern techniques show it is a different, but closely-related, species.
Silky oak used to be Grevillea robusta but Grevillea won't grow in plantations - or even close to other grevilleas - due to pheromones which discourage competing grevilleas. The timber sold as 'Silky Oak' is a different species with a similar figure - and better stocks. It is interesting to see the name 'Horsetail Casuarina'. The Latin name 'Casuarina' refers to grevillea looking like a cassowary's tail, so horsetail is a sort of redundancy!
There are a few flindersia species called 'maple' here - purely because the Poms fancied that there was a resemblance to the European timber of that name.
Australia has lots of trees that are very distant from anything on your side of the world and some of the early namings look pretty dubious to us, today.
It is a bit like the small wallabies that I discussed with Murray in the "... Australiana Maverns" Thread. The little ones are called 'Thylogales' - "pouch-weasels" and our beautiful Rock Wallabies are called 'Petrogales' - "rock-weasels". There is nothing at all weasly about them, but this was the best trhe poor old Poms could come up with!
Regards,
Bob Bolton