Author Archives: Jürgen

Plant of the Month: Mar. 2017

Cryptandra tomentosa. Photo: C. Lindoff, CC-BY 2.5 AU (natureshare.org.au).

The State Herbarium of South Australia has chosen Cryptandra tomentosa Lindl. as Plant of the Month. It is widespread in south-eastern Australia and also occurs in DEWNR’s Park of the Month for March 2017, Anstey Hill Recreation Park. The Park includes the site of the former Newman’s Nursery, which featured in an article by Taplin & Symon, published in the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens (21.3mb PDF).

Cryptandra tomentosa was named by British botanist John Lindley from plant material collected by exporer Thomas Mitchell in the Grampians, Victoria. From the account of Mitchell’s journey, it is clear that the collections were made on 15 July 1836, when the expedition party was on Mt Willam. The new species was described to be “remarkable on account of its downy leaves”.

Typical Cryptandra tomentosa plants are small shrubs, with inconspicuous white flowers clustered towards the end of the branches; the flowers tend to turn reddish or pinkish when older. Leaves are narrow and up to 5 mm long, rarely longer, the margins are usually tightly rolled so that only the midrib is visible on the lower surface. The upper surface of the leaves is glabrous and smooth, however, not “downy” as described by Mitchell. What is hairy in C. tomentosa are the stems, especially young ones, and the lower surface of the leaves, which is usually obscured. Some early botanists believed the red- and white-flowered forms were different and described them as separate species, e.g. C. erubescens F.Muell. was published as a name for a red-flowered specimen of C. tomentosa.

Typical Cryptandra flower. Modified from K.R.Thiele, J. Adelaide Bot. Gard. 21: 64, Tab. 1 (2007).

Flowers in the plant family Rhamnaceae are quite unique in that the petals are placed opposite the stamens (obhaplostemonous) and “hooding” the anthers, whereas in “standard” angiosperm flowers, the stamens are opposite the sepals. Sepals in Rhamnaceae are colourful and are the most conspicuous parts of the flower; the typical condition for angiosperms is that the sepals are green and smaller than the petals. Most Rhamnaceae flowers also have a conspicuous nectar-secreting disk that covers or surrounds the ovary. In the genus Cryptandra, all flowers are also surrounded by numerous brown bracts.

C. tomentosa, older flowers turning red. Photo C. Clarke, CC-BY 2.5 AU (natureshare.org.au).

The name C. tomentosa was applied wrongly to many plants in south-eastern Australia, even Western Australia. The taxa related and similar to C. tomentosa and C. amara Sm. are currently being revised by State Herbarium botanist Jürgen Kellermann and his colleague Frank Udovicic from the National Herbarium of Victoria. Some taxa that had been named in the past as C. tomentosa are now known as Cryptandra sp. Floriferous, Cryptandra sp. Hiltaba, Cryptandra campanulata Schltdl., C. nutans Steud. and C. myriantha Diels (interestingly, the only species of Cryptandra to occur on both sides of the Nullarbor).

Herbarium access during WOMAD & Clipsal 500

From 10-13 March 2017 the 25th WOMAD Festival will be held in Botanic Park. During this time access to the State Herbarium of South Australia by car will be difficult for volunteers, Hon. Associates and staff, and parking will be quite restricted. Note that Plane Tree Drive and Botanic Drive will be closed to the public a few days before and after the Festival, from 6 to 16 March.

Detailed explanations of the parking arrangements from can be found here (440kb PDF). Please consider using public transport during this time, or visit us by foot or on your bicycle. The Botanic Gardens are open from 7:15am–6:30pm.

The Clipsal 500 motor sport event will take place in a few days, from 2 to 5 March 2017.  Some roads are already closed and car parks in the surrounding area, including the Botanic Gardens, are filling up — especially since the Adelaide Fringe Festival is also happening at the same time.

Christmas greetings

The State Herbarium of South Australia wishes all followers of the blog, its  volunteers, staff, Hon. Research Associates and Research Affiliates a very happy Christmas break and all the best for the New Year. We hope to see you all again in 2017!

Please note that the State Herbarium will be closed during the holiday period from 23 Dec. 2016 to 2 Jan. 2017.

Last week, we celebrated our traditional volunteers’ End-of-year-thank-you party.  Everyone had a nice time and enjoyed the good food.  During the last year, Herbarium volunteers and Hon. Associates donated over 12,843  hours of their valuable time, which is equivalent to 8 full-time staff members.

New Journal articles: Dec. 2016

Today, the State Herbarium of South Australia published two large papers in the online version of the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

H.R. Toelken, Revision of Kunzea (Myrtaceae). 2. Subgenera Angasomyrtus and Salisia (section Salisia) from Western Australia and subgenera Kunzea and Niviferae (sections Platyphyllae and Pallidiflorae) from eastern Australia. (8.1mb PDF)

Kunzea pulchella. Photo: M. Fagg (ANBG).

This paper almost completes Hon. Research Associate Hellmut Toelken‘s revision of the genus Kunzea. Some Western Australian taxa were treated before by Toelken (1996) (5.38mb PDF) and Toelken & Craig (2007). The current paper revises most of the eastern Australian species, as well as others from Western Australia, and follows the infrageneric framework established by de Lange et al. (2010). Ten new species and two new subspecies are described and illustrated; hybridisation within the genus is discussed in detail. A review of Kunzea sect. Niviferae in Australia, which contains K. ericoides and related taxa, is currently in progress and will complete the revision of the genus; it will be published in the near future. The New Zealand members of that section were described by de Lange (2014).

P.S. Short, Notes concerning the classification of species included in Calocephalus R.Br. s.lat. and Gnephosis Cass. s.lat. (Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae), with descriptions of new genera and species. (4.4mb PDF)

Trichanthodium skirrophorum. Photo: P.S. Short.

Phil Short from Darwin continues his revision of genera of Asteraceae, after the publication of his recent paper on Brachyscome and Roebuckiella in J. Adelaide Bot. Gard. 28: 1-219 (2014) & 28: 221-222 (2015) (10.5mb PDF & 342kb PDF), with this monograph on Calocephalus, Gnephosis and related taxa. Fourty species are described in the paper: Two new genera (Balladonia & Notisia) and five new species. The complicated taxonomic and nomenclatural history of the group is also discussed.

To access content of all volumes of the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens since Vol. 1 (1976), please visit the journal’s web-site at flora.sa.gov.au/jabg (the Journal is also available through JSTOR).

International Volunteer Day 2016

International Volunteer Day is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly and is held each year on December 5. It is a day for volunteers and volunteer based organizations to celebrate their efforts, to share their values, and to showcase the difference they make in their communities.

volunteers-deh037-400x600International Volunteer Day once again provides the opportunity for the State Herbarium of South Australia to recognise and reflect on the huge contribution that its volunteers and Honorary Research Associates make to the success and reputation of our institution.

As a gauge of how significant that contribution is, last financial year the Herbarium’s volunteers contributed 12,843 hours of their time. The Honorary Research Associates’ efforts made up 8,623 of those hours.

The ten Honoraries continue to play a major part in providing the taxonomic research that underpins our fundamental knowledge about native and introduced plant and fungal diversity. To single out some projects, significant contributions were made to weed research by Hellmut Toelken with his work on native and introduced pigfaces, Carpobrotus species (a joint project with the Adelaide and Mt Lofty Ranges Natural Resource Management Region and Birdlife Australia that has been nominated for a DEWNR Green Globe award), Bill Barker with his work on weedy and native broom-rapes (Orobanche) and Laurie Haegi contributing his expertise to help determine if a biological control for a weedy Solanum species can be introduced to Australia without threatening our diverse native Solanum species.  All three are recognised as national and international experts in their fields and we are very fortunate to have their and our other Honoraries skill and experience available to us.

Communicating our knowledge is also a vital part of our work. The efforts of Honorary Bob Baldock in providing beautifully photographed Algae Revealed fact-sheets to help describe and identify our State’s mega-diverse marine algae flora are creating an invaluable addition to our identification aids.  Bob is also an excellent communicator and his blog articles and stunning images of marine algae have set a high bar.

Our general volunteers numbered almost 30 this year and ranged from enthusiastic botany students and graduates to our very senior and experienced long-term volunteers. Once again we are very fortunate to have such a loyal and dedicated volunteer workforce who play a major role in keeping the vital routines of maintaining a collection of over one million specimens in good order.

Contributed by State Herbarium Manager Peter Canty.