Whatever they said to you at school, farming is the oldest profession.
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Category Archives: Endangered Species
A Taste of Macedonia
When I noticed someone in Macedonia was reading my blog, it occurred to me that food is the easiest way to appreciate a different culture. So I looked up ‘My Macedonian Kitchen’ and prepared some Tavče Gravče.
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A Rare Honour
Our Phillip Island Hibiscus, Hibiscus insularis, has been immortalised in a botanical illustration by Halina Steele. This work is now part of the collections of the National Herbarium of NSW…
“Dear Jerry
I have finally finished my painting of Hibiscus insularis and as you were kind enough to send me photos of this plant, I thought you might like to see the finished product. When I visited Mt Annan Botanic Gardens, I was lucky enough to see a couple of small flowers. I noticed that these flowers lacked the maroon centre that presented in the flowers in your photos. To represent both the plants growing at Mt Annan (which was the main object of this exercise) and the true type of the species, I included both forms in my painting with an explanatory note on the back (copy attached). Continue Reading →
Queensland’s Flying Foxes Are Starving – Again
Pictured: driven by famine, a black flying fox drinks nectar from my banana flowers before sunset
Bat Conservation & Rescue Qld President, Louise Saunders, is alarmed by the large number of reports about hungry flying-foxes staying by food trees through the day and not returning to their camps.
“This is of huge concern as bats will stay by food trees until the food runs out. They will then be too weak to fly further afield and will die in people’s gardens like we saw in the winter of 2007. This is starvation”, Louise said.
“This current starvation crisis is in relation to the decrease in available food especially the lack of nectar flow in eucalypt and other nectar producing plants. Other wildlife groups are also experiencing increases in the number of lorikeets coming into care. With the low night time temperatures the nectar feeders, flying-foxes and lorikeets, are unable to find enough food to sustain them”.
Symbionts In The Shrubbery
coralloid roots of Encephalartos ferox
Whilst scrabbling around on my knees this morning, mulching the front garden with chopped sugarcane, I noticed the biggest and best display of coralloid roots is currently bursting through the surface of the leafy soil. Continue Reading →
Darwinia polychroma
Darwinia polychroma
I’ve finally found the original slide I took when I discovered this new species of Darwinia (Myrtaceae) whilst in Western Australia on the Thornton-Smith Scholarship in 1982.
Each year the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew funds a botanical expedition for one of its students on completion of the Kew course. I spent six months travelling, collecting and photographing the wildflowers in the south west of WA, following spring from Exmouth to Esperance.
During that time I exported over 450 species of wildflower to Kew, many of which had never before been grown in Europe. For each specimen collected for export I kept photographic and botanical collection records and also provided the Kew and Western Australian herbaria with voucher (pressed, dried) specimens. Continue Reading →
Big Solutions Create Bigger Problems
Glenda Pickersgill is a passionate conservationist and leading light in the Save the Mary River campaign.
ABC news on line reports that the Queensland Premier believes that the proposed Traveston Crossing dam at the Mary River Valley is a cheap solution for SE Queensland’s water needs.
The truth is somewhat different: as Oscar Wilde said “The cynic knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing”…
The Traveston Dam proposal was a political stunt, delivered by a premier who intended to retire. Despite the CSIRO evidence of decreasing rainfall in South East Queensland in his hands, his desperation to appear decisive and capable of managing the region’s water crisis won out. Continue Reading →
Botanical Stamps
A selection collected by my parents, grandfather and me.
One way for a child to learn about plants and places…and a bit of botanical latin too.
There’s just one from my grandfather’s collection: Cattleya skinneri, an orchid. Stamps of his era hadn’t tapped into the profitable collectors’ market. There are more from my father’s collection which he started in 1931. These two collections span the peak and close of the colonial era, useful for understanding politics and nationalism. There are also some beautiful first day issues sent to me by my mother, something that she has done all my life.
The Drought In Management
Evolving about 350 million years ago, the Australian Lungfish (aka the Queensland Lungfish), Neoceratodus forsteri, represents an ancient animal line, more precious than the Wollemi Pine. Of the six living lungfish species found worldwide, our native species is the most ancient and distinctive.
As a child I was fascinated by prehistoric creatures. Instead of fantasising about football I fantasised about keeping weird pets, lungfish included. Lungfish are so ancient they predated the dinosaurs, the conifers, the cycads and all flowering plants.
Artist’s impression of classical Carboniferous lungfish habitat
When lungfish first evolved the world was more evenly warm and wet and there were no polar ice caps. Now extinct giant clubmosses and gloriously bizarre ‘seed ferns’ flourished so abundantly that their semi-decomposed remains formed vast seams of coal. Continue Reading →
The Ultimate Hibiscus?
I have been instructed by Denise Horchner to write about my Phillip Island Hibiscus, Hibiscus insularis.
This is what I call my ‘signature plant’ and as far as I’m aware, I’m the only person who has used this species to create a semi-formal, flowering hedge. And my latest hedge is growing and flowering now. View the pictures →
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