This week, the revamped AVH was released. Same acronym, but new name: it is now called the “Australasian Virtual Herbarium“. The web-portal encompasses data from all New Zealand and Australian herbaria, i.e. over 8 million specimen records are available through the web-site.

In addition, the advanced search option has been up-graded and new special filters and facets have been added. Other improvements have been implemented, as well, for example in the downloads.

“The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) is an online resource that provides dynamic access to the wealth of plant specimen data held by Australian and New Zealand herbaria. The AVH is a collaborative project developed under the auspices of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH).”

J.D. Hooker before 1879. Published in The Popular Science Monthly (1902).

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911), one of the great botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Son of William Jackson Hooker, he was introduced to plant science early in his life, attending botany lectures of his father at Glasgow University at the age of 7—and he didn’t stop being a botanist from then.

Soon after he obtained a medical degree, he joined the navy and accompanied the scientific expedition of the Erebus and Terror to the Antarctic. This was the first of several expeditions around the world, and probably his most influential. For four years he travelled the southern oceans. On 30 September, 1839 the ships departed Britain and visited Ascension, St Helena, the Cape, Kerguelen, Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand, Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands, and sailed along a vast extent of the coast of Antarctica. Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) was visited twice, during August–October 1840 and March–May 1841, and there was a brief stay at Port Jackson (Sydney). The ships arrived back in England on 4 September, 1843.

Following this expedition, Hooker wrote his monumental The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in 1839–1843, which was published between 1843 and 1859 in six large volumes. It is one of the most important works in Australasian botany, containing Flora Antarctica (2 vols: Lord Auckland Island, Campbell’s Island, Terra del Fuego, Falkland Islands, etc.), Flora Novae Zelandiae (2 vols) and Flora Tasmaniae (2 vols). Each part was introduced with a lengthy essay on the flora and vegetation of the region, especially the introductory chapter on Tasmania is a “milestone essay on biogeography”. Illustrated with numerous colour plates the volumes provided detailed descriptions of over 3000 species, many of which were new to science.

Cryptandra alpina, a Tasmanian endemic shrub described by J.D. Hooker. Flora Tasmaniae plate 12 (1855).

In 1855, Hooker was appointed Assistant-Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and later succeeded his father as Director, a post he held for 20 years. Hooker continued to travel and published numerous scientific papers and books (see listing in TL-2). He was a friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin and probably one of the first full-time professional botanists.

From 1862 to 1883 he collaborated with George Bentham (1800–1884), probably the leading systematic botanist of the 19th century, in the preparation and publication of Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in herbariis kewensibus servata definita, a monumental overview of all families and genera of vascular plants, then known to science. The taxonomic system used in that work is known as the Bentham & Hooker System and was used by generations of botanists.

Hooker’s legacy cannot be underestimated. He is celebrated in the book Imperial nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian science by Jim Endersby, a one-day symposium held today, and a concurrent exhibition at the Library, RBG Kew.

More information about Hooker can be found here:

• Australian Dictionary of Bibliography
• Wikipedia
• Plant Explorers
• RBG Kew: Hooker Collection (also described in this article; 1.5mb PDF)
• The Victorian Web
• Nature article by Jim Endersby (22 June 2017)

Our colleagues from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew have released this year’s State of the World’s Plants report (press release). This is the second such report, after the initial one that was released in 2016. Visit https://stateoftheworldsplants.com/ to see the web-version and to download the full reports.

The web-site states…

Last year‘s State of the World’s Plants report focused predominantly on synthesising knowledge of the numbers of different categories of plants: How many vascular plants are currently known to science? How many are threatened with extinction? What is the number of plants with uses? etc. We also looked at the main threats to these plants, including climate change, land- use change, invasive plants, disease and over-exploitation. However, simply knowing how many plants there are and how many are under threat is not enough – what is also needed is an understanding of why some plants are more vulnerable than others. This year, therefore, we have also examined the emerging evidence for the characteristics of plants that appear to make some types less/more resilient to current and future threats.

It is not all doom and gloom, however. In this year’s State of the World’s Plants, we also highlight the rapidly accumulating discoveries and knowledge that provide important sign-posts to the next food crops, medicines, timbers etc. Information is now also emerging on the effectiveness of conservation actions and policies in protecting some of the most important plant species and communities across the globe. While there is still much more to do, these positive outcomes demonstrate that with scientific knowledge and evidence-based global actions, it is possible to conserve the extraordinary diversity of plants on Earth and to build on the unique combination of beauty and science which can together provide some of the solutions for the global challenges facing humanity today.

Tibouchina roseanae (Melastomataceae), a new species  from Brasil. The pink petals have fallen, revealing the curious kneed stamens. Photo: W. Milliken.

During the last year, 1,730 plants were discovered, some of which are pictured and described on the web-site and in the report. Other focus areas of the 2017 report are

• Climate change – New evidence shows which plants have the ability to cope with change
• Medicinal plants – First time that 28,187 species recorded with a medicinal use
• Plant health – $540bn/yr cost to agriculture if invasive pests & pathogens aren’t controlled
• Wildfires – 340 million hectares of the earth’s vegetative surface burns annually (more than the size of India).

In conjunction with the publication of the report, scientists and policymakers also gathered last month at Kew for the second international State of the World’s Plants Symposium.  The two-day event was a platform to discuss issues raised in the report and to engage the scientific community, policymakers and public.

With the first autumn and winter rains, many underground fungi species respond by producing their fruiting bodies – the things we familiarly call mushrooms and toadstools.

Yellow Stainer, Agaricus xanthodermus, a poisonous fungus. Photo: P.S. Catcheside.

Australia has hundreds of native species of fungi, many of them yet to be discovered and described by mycologists (fungi scientists). As a result of European settlement there are also many introduced species, some of which we are familiar with from a culinary perspective, others are accidental introductions and definitely not edible at all.

A growing international interest in harvesting wild plants and fungi for food has seen this trend become popular in Australia. In places like Europe, knowledge around which species are edible and which species are not has been gathered and passed on for many generations.

In Australia however, it is a different story. While there is some knowledge about edibility of native fungi, there is much that is not known. Some of the introduced edible species look very much like native species about which nothing is known, and to make it more complicated, some of the poisonous introduced species can look similar to both introduced edible and native inedible species.

Deathcap, Amantia phalloides, a lethally poisonous fungus. Photo: D.E.A. Catcheside.

Because of this, the State Herbarium of South Australia has a strict policy of not encouraging anyone to eat any wild-found fungi, and does not provide public identifications for edibility. The only safe mushroom is one bought from a regulated grower or retailer.

In a poisoning emergency phone 13 11 26 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Australia-wide).

Today, three revised State Herbarium Factsheets, written by Hon. Research Associate Pam Catcheside, were released:

• Edible and poisonous fungi (500kb PDF)
• Yellow Stainer (630kb PDF)
• Death Cap (600kb PDF)

SA Health has also recently released an alert about poisonous mushrooms, see below. Similar alerts were also issued elsewhere, for example in Victoria and the ACT.

Contributed by State Herbarium Manager Peter Canty.