The destruction was, dare I say it, unprecedented - 30,000 cars, countless skylights as well as decades of valuable research destroyed when glass houses at CSIRO Black Mountain laboratories were smashed to smithereens.

While this damage to man-made objects has been well documented, very little has been reported on the impacts on the flora of the bush capital.

However, one lady who has taken more than a keen interest in the effects of the hail on our flora, especially gum trees, is Dr Rosemary Purdie, a Canberra ecologist with a long association with the Black Mountain Nature Reserve which was, of course in the firing line of the storm.

"Living in nearby Aranda, I treat Black Mountain a bit like an extension of my back yard," explains Rosemary, who, over the last six years has "spent a lot of time on the reserve looking for plants that haven't been recorded there for a long time, seeing if they could be relocated".

However following the storm the focus of Rosemary's research temporarily changed. "Three days after the storm, I went for a long walk over the north-west side of Black Mountain and was just amazed to see the extent that some trees had been stripped by the hail," explains Rosemary. "In some places the canopy was almost completely defoliated.

"The walking tracks and maintenance roads were covered in a thick layer of fallen green twigs and leaves, smothering a lot of the vegetation on the ground."

But it wasn't just the canopies which felt the full fury of the hail storm, with many tree trunks also taking on an unusual spotted appearance - pock-marked with giant hail-inflicted bruises.

"The extent and size of those bruises really gives a sense of the force with which the hail was slamming down onto the trees," says Rosemary, who promptly took a series of photos to document the damage.

Although to the untrained eye, the bruising appears quite alarming, Rosemary explains "in most of the trees I examined it was only the very outer layer of the bark that had been damaged".

Since the storm, Rosemary has been keeping close watch on the reserve to monitor how the trees have responded to the hail damage.

"If leaves are lost on eucalypts, whether it be because of drought or fire, most gum trees respond by sending out epicormic regrowth, with buds growing along the stems," she explains.

"The hail-damaged trees have responded in the same way, and perhaps even quicker than in the case of fire," she explains, with many trees that were stripped bare in January, now resplendent in epicormic growth.

The bruising on the trunks is also no longer as obvious. "Many of the gums on the reserve, like the red box, the scribbly gum and the brittle gum, shed their bark at this time of year anyway, so a lot of trees have lost that bruising as the bark has dropped off," explains Rosemary. "And where the bruising permeated that outer layer of bark the trees are responding with epicormic growth."

The trees have also had bit of help from the weather too.

"If we hadn't had those good rains in February and March, the shoots wouldn't have grown anywhere near as much," says Rosemary. "There's absolutely no doubt the rains have kicked it along."

Thankfully, the effects of ground vegetation being smothered with leaf litter from the canopy has also been minimal.

"For a week or so after the storm, bushwalkers had to tip-toe gingerly through all the twigs strewn over paths, but it's mainly been walked into the ground, trodden all down and dispersed," explains Rosemary.

"Deeper in the bush, the suppression hasn't had much of an effect as the leaf litter has broken down pretty quickly," explains Rosemary who admits to being surprised "just how many little herbaceous plants have started flowering again".

In fact, according to Rosemary, the plants of Black Mountain have recovered so well that "by later this year there will be very little evidence that the storm ever occurred", adding "that's why I think it's important we have this on record to show the impact on the trees". Indeed.

So, while the plants seem to be well on the way to recovery, several readers have asked if there were many animals casualties as a result of the hail storm. "On Black Mountain, the lack of animals after the storm was obvious but that was probably more due to the drought than the hail," reports Rosemary who confesses she was "pretty focused on just the plants anyway."

While this column is aware of some reports of small birds killed elsewhere in Canberra, including bats in Commonwealth Park, the animal fatalities don't seem to be on par with historical reports held by the Bureau of Meteorology of some other severe storms where small animals like ducks and wallabies have been killed. Heck.

When fires ravaged Namadgi National Park in January, many nature lovers feared for the plight of one of our best loved trees, the iconic snow gum atop Mt Gingera.

The gnarly gum, stunted by years of blizzards and which clings precariously to the rocky top of Mt Gingera, is a long-time favourite of ACT bushwalkers and one of the most photographed trees in the Brindabellas.

Well, more good news for tree lovers, photographs provided by park rangers show that although fire burnt right up to the iconic tree, it was undamaged by the flames.

Great news, in a week when it's really needed.

CONTACT TIM: Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.com or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick.

Not all readers are happy with Rohan Goyne's decision to feature the Peter Corlett sculpture of Ben Chifley and John Curtin in Parkes as two separate entries in his Top 100 Objects. (The 100 Objects that define Canberra, March 14.).

"Sorry, this is a double-portrait sculpture - you can't have one without the other," asserts Brendon Kelson.

"It reflects an intimate and critical moment between Prime Minister and Treasurer nearing the end of the most terrible war in history," says Brendon, adding, "it makes no historical or aesthetic sense to consider each on his own."

Meanwhile other readers including Kai Colling have nominated other items to be added to the Top 100 list. Kai suggests "the old blue tourist signs (Molonglo Reach and Scrivener Dam), flagstone walls, LANE ONE FORM signs and those seemingly ubiquitous speed monitoring vans".

What do you think should be on this list?

Although this column has reported on this before, Gary Poile of Collector wanted to remind readers of the perils of hoarding too much food. "Prior to the Federal Highway bypassing Collector in 1988, accidents on the narrow bridge at the southern end of the village over the Collector Creek were frequent", reports Gary.

Apparently in December 1980, a semitrailer carrying Nabisco-branded breakfast cereals and biscuits overturned, and after the driver was rescued (with only minor injuries) some opportunistic townsfolk, including Gary, who was in his final year at school, raced to the crash site to ''salvage'' the lost load.

"The whole town was munching on Vita Brits for breakfast for months,'' reveals Gary, adding, ''That is, until mice started to show up. First there were a few, then hundreds and before you knew it there was a plague of thousands of mice in town".

It turns out the townsfolk had pilfered so many biscuits that pantries overflowed with biscuits for months, prompting a localised mice plague.

Mmm, I wonder if they eat toilet paper.

Clue: Northside

Degree of difficulty: Hard

Last week: Congratulations to first-time winner Angela Kueter-Luks of Bruce who was first to correctly identify the location of last week's photo as the cemetery at Lanyon Homestead.

"Years ago my children loved to visit Lanyon and soak in its history and I remember wandering through those buildings," reports Angela, who just beat Lyndall Drake to the prize. "Apparently the coffin of William Wright, the first burial in the cemetery had to be weighed down with large stones to protect it from attack by dingos." Heck.

Meanwhile, regular reader Roxanne Missingham took a group of librarians from around the world to Lanyon last July for lunch. "It was wonderful to be greeted by kangaroos as we arrived and then a rambling wombat led us to the homestead," reports Roxanne, adding "They thought this hospitality was pretty good and, we, of course, told them that wombats gave tours regularly at the Homestead."

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday March 28, 2020 will WIN A DOUBLE PASS TO DENDY CINEMA - THE HOME OF QUALITY CINEMA.

The family fun day to celebrate the opening of the Tumbarumba - Rosewood Rail Trail featured in last week's column scheduled for April 4 has been cancelled.

Devils Eyes

"During a recent stroll through the Australian National Botanic Gardens, volunteer guide Margaret Webber spotted this face, complete with red eyes. The plant is a Lambertia formosa, commonly known as the Mountain Devil, and is the only species in the genus to occur in eastern Australia. Oh, and I think she photoshopped-in those red eyes. At least I hope she did.