Firefox accordion background stuttering

I am getting a strange behavior with Firefox using the accordion. This works fine in all other browsers including Internet Explorer. First, let me describe my setup.

Firefox 3 (Tested in OS X and Windows, same behavior)

jQuery 1.3.2

jQuery UI 1.7

Relevant screenshots:

Normal- http://www.jasonism.org/media/normal.png

Broken- http://www.jasonism.org/media/broken.png

Corresponding code:

$(function() {

$("#accordion").accordion({

autoHeight: false,

alwaysOpen: false,

collapsable: true,

header: 'h3',

active: false

});

});

If you take a look at the above screenshots you will notice a tree.

This tree is a background image. Whenever I click on one of the

accordion tabs, it in turns drops down everything underneath of it to make room for the content as it should. But the problem I am seeing is with the tree creating a stuttering effect. It seems to me that this is a bug since it works in Safari and IE 7. Have not tested on IE 6.

I tried a different solution that involved using the background as an image and absolutely positioning it. This seemed to fix it but I did have to use z-index to bring the main content box out in front of the tree. But alas, IE 7 would not even show the tree. However it worked when I disabled the accordion. I guess the accordion was messing with the z-index and IE could not handle it.