Last month, Dr Andrew Thornhill started working at the State Herbarium of South Australia.  Originally from Melbourne, Andrew studied and worked at Monash University (Melbourne), the Australian National University, Australian National Herbarium and CSIRO (all Canberra), the Australian Tropical Herbarium (Cairns), the University of California (Berkeley, USA) and the federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (Canberra). In his current position, he is working for both, The University of Adelaide and the State Herbarium on a variety of projects, including the analysis of molecular data-sets and re-organisation of the Herbarium’s bryophyte collection.

In 2011, Andrew started a project on creating a complete species level phylogeny of the eucalypts (which include the genera Eucalyptus, Angophora and Corymbia). The idea was to sample DNA for as many eucalypt species as possible, combine that data and see how all of the species were related to each other. This week, over seven years later, the project was published.

Thornhill, A.H., Crisp, M.D., Külheim, C., Lam, K.E., Nelson, L.A., Yeate,s D.K., Miller, J.T. (2019). A dated molecular perspective of eucalypt taxonomy, evolution and diversification. Australian Systematic Botany 32: 29-48.

Eucalyptus porosa. Photo: Clive M. Chesson.

There are over 800 described eucalypt species in the world and we are close to soon having 900. Around 1/8th of the total number of eucalypt species are native to South Australia and they grow in the arid and forest areas in an array of habits, be it mallees or trees up in the hills.

The paper presents a dated phylogeny of the Australian eucalypts and a diversification analysis to show if any parts of the eucalypt phylogeny have had accelerated diversification. What Andrew and his colleagues found was that many of the species that grow in the arid and forest areas of southern and south-eastern Australia have only evolved in the last two million years, this includes many of the eucalypt species that grow in South Australia. Their origin comes due to a divergence with Western Australian eucalypts, but that’s not to say that Western Australia is where eucalypts originated. There are even deeper splits in the history of eucalypts that suggests that either south-west Western Australia or south-east Queensland could be the source of origin. One way to find this out may be by finding new ‘oldest’ fossils in either of these places, which would help provide evidence that eucalypts grew there in the deep past.

The results of this research are also discussed by Andrew in an article in The Conversation. The treatment for eucalypts in the new, 5th edition of the Flora of South Australia is also available (33.7mb PDF).

Today, the State Herbarium of South Australia published two article in the online version of Swainsona.

Utricularia dichotoma. Photo: J.G.Conran.

(1) J.G. Conran, Weird and wonderful plants of South Australia (2.3mb PDF)

This article is published in Vol. 30 of the journal, which contains the Proceedings of the Botany Symposium “Botany 2016 — Past, present and future“, held at the 2016 NRM Science Conference, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the State Herbarium.

John Conran‘s contribution to the Conference was an overview of interesting plants in the State. He discusses tiny Trithuria plants, carnivorous sundews, triggerplants with spring-loaded pollination mechanisms, parasitic plants like mistletoes, quandongs and snotty gobbles, and many others.

(2) P.S. Catcheside & D.E.A. Catcheside, CORRIGENDUM to: A new species of small black disc fungi, Smardaea australis (Pezizales, Pyronemataceae), is described from Australia (430kb PDF)

This articles corrects an error in the description of a fungus species that was published in Vol. 31 in June 2017. The original article is available here (1.8mb PDF).

To access content of all volumes of Swainsona and the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens since Vol. 1 (1976), please visit the journal’s web-site at flora.sa.gov.au/swainsona.

A new book on the plants of southern Eyre Peninsula has just been published:

Saunders, Brian (2018). Flowering plants of lower Eyre Peninsula: An illustrated tour of the native flora, 200 pp. Camden Park: Lane Print & Post.

The book is a photographic identification guide to the more common plants of the area, with brief notes on their distribution and biology. The southern half of Eyre Peninsula is home to many remarkable plants, including some which are endemic to the region. A list of all EP native plants can be found through the eFloraSA website.

State Herbarium of South Australia botanist Peter Lang was heavily involved in the book project, advising Brian on the correct names of plants and checking text and images.

The publication is available in shops in Coffin Bay, Port Lincoln and Adelaide at $25.

Other well-known identification guides by the author include:

• Shores and shallows of Coffin Bay: An identification guide (2012, 2nd edition)
• Admiring the fungi of lower Eyre Peninsula: A preliminary guide to the larger fungi of the region (2015).