Gympie Regional Memories

Gimpi Gimpi, the Stinging Plant

Dendrocnide excelsa along West Canungra Creek Circuit, Woonoongoora (Green Mountains section). Photograph by Stacey Larner.
Gympie Gympie Plant (taken from Health Direct)

Take a look at an insightful blog by the State Library of Queensland’s – John Oxley blog on our namesake and endemic stinging plant! Scroll below for some more insights about our namesake tree.

Queensland’s Gympie-Gympie: the world’s most painful plant

Dendrocnide excelsa along West Canungra Creek Circuit, Woonoongoora (Green Mountains section). Photograph by Stacey Larner.
Dendrocnide excelsa along West Canungra Creek Circuit, Woonoongoora (Green Mountains section). Photograph by Stacey Larner. Taken from State Library of Queensland
From the Gympie Regional Libraries, Local History files

The Gympie Times, 8 April 1890, page 3

Bob McFadden (local poet and artist in the 1920’s), experienced the Gimpi Gimpi tree and wrote the following verse:

Oh, Gympie Gympie, charming tree
Your shapely leaves appeal to me
Filling my artistic eye
With beauty as I pass you by
Touch me not, I felt you say
In time, Yes! I’ll keep away
You have the power to make me dance
Like bees and wasps and jumper ants
The joy! The pain, this truth I tell
A glimpse of Heaven, a touch of Hell

–Bob McFadden

The World’s News (Sydney), 4 May 1940, page 23, Australiana