Category Archives: Events

4th South Australian Weeds Conference

Next week, State Herbarium staff will attend this year’s South Australian Weeds Conference at the Plant Research Centre, Waite Campus, Urrbrae. On 6 & 7 May 2014, weed experts, land managers, botanists and others will discuss the latest developments in the area, and hear of experiences on weeds and weed management from across a range of land uses, from agriculture to conservation, and across a variety of regions in South Australia.

Weeds botanist Chris Brodie from the State Herbarium will give a presentation on new weed threats in South Australia. He will also demonstrate how to collect and press “difficult” plants to get adequate herbarium specimens (e.g. some weeds are very spiny and hard to collect or preserve, such as cacti or thistles). A recent post in this BLOG also examined the number of weeds in the State and gave an account by region.

The Conference is organised by the Weed Management Society of South Australia.

Open House Adelaide 2014

The State Herbarium will be open to the public on 3 and 4 May 2014 during Open House Adelaide as part of the About Time: South Australia’s History Festival.

The heritage-listed 1909 Tram Barn A was once part of a complex housing the Adelaide tram fleet. Now the State Herbarium, it houses over one million plant specimens instead. See some of the first plants collected in the State on Matthew Flinders‘ voyage and learn how all these dried specimens are critical to the effective preservation of living plants.

Read more about Tram Barn A (1.15mb pdf) and the over one million plant specimens (561kb pdf) in booklets published by State Herbarium staff.

Guided walking tours will be available on both 3 and 4 May at 11am and 1pm.

Bookings are essential.

Stroll around a palaeolake in a New Zealand sub-tropical rainforest

It’s All About the Plants
Tuesday, 4 February 2014—10:00–12:00
Goodman Building Lecture Theatre

by Dr John Conran (Associate Head of School)
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Adelaide

The flora surrounding the early Miocene (23 Ma) Foulden Maar palaeolake included a highly diverse Lauraceae-dominated rainforest with macro- and/or microfossils of now extinct species of epiphytic ferns, a wide range of gymnosperms, 10 species of Lauraceae, and numerous other angiosperms typical of present-day New Zealand ecosystems, including diverse monocots. The macrofossils include leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds and in several cases are sufficiently detailed to allow placement onto cladograms with putative modern relatives, improving the phylogenetic significance of the fossils and their utility for dating evolutionary trees (e.g. Fuchsia, Laurelia, Luzuriaga). Comparisons with the ecology of modern relatives to the fossils at the site suggest that the forest included canopy trees, understorey shrubs, epiphytes, mistletoes, ferns, and vines, as well as forest margin pioneers and emergent aquatic macrophytes. The rainforest supported a mixture of wind-, bird- and insect-pollinated species, as well as both animal- and wind-dispersed fruit and seed types.

Foulden Flora

The palaeoforest most closely resembled a warm temperate to subtropical notophyll vine forest, but was comprised of what are now Australian, New Zealand, South American and New Caledonian elements. CLAMP (Climate Leaf Analysis Multivariate Programme) analysis of fossil leaf morphology at the site also suggests that SE Queensland rainforests are the nearest living climatic proxy. Apparent differences between the in situ macrofossils and the microfossils can be explained partly in terms of local versus regional scales, as well as variation in the soils and underlying geology surrounding the maar. The possible ecology, climate and habitats at the palaeolake and their implications are discussed in terms of the diversity and uniformity of mid-latitude southern New Zealand at the Oligocene–Miocene boundary.

All Herbarium staff, honoraries, volunteers and students are welcome.
Morning tea provided.

[cite as: Southern New Zealand at the Oligocene–Miocene boundary: floristic and palaeoecological characterisation of Foulden Maar.
John G. Conran¹, Daphne E. Lee², Jennifer M. Bannister³ and Dallas C. Mildenhall⁴
¹ACEBB & SGC, School of Earth & Environmental Sciences DX 650 312, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia; ²Department of Geology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin; ³Department of Botany, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin; ⁴GNS Science, PO Box 30368, Lower Hutt]

Seminar dates for 2014

Spyridium halmaturinum

The State Herbarium of South Australia’s seminar series It’s all about the plants will continue next year. The talks will again take place in the Botanic Garden’s Goodman Building Lecture Theatre (Hackney Road, Adelaide) on the first Tuesday of every month, except January and December, from 10:00–12:00.

The dates for 2014 are:
4 February, 4 March, 1 April, 6 May, 3 June, 1 July, 5 August, 7 October and 4 November.

Topics will be announced on this BLOG about two weeks before a seminar takes place, so stay tuned (and subscribe to get updates). All Herbarium staff, honoraries, volunteers and students are welcome.

New fungi species for South Australia

It’s All About the Plants
Tuesday, 5 November 2013—10:00–12:00
Goodman Building Lecture Theatre

by Pam Catcheside (Honorary Research Associate Mycologist)
State Herbarium of South Australia

As South Australia’s foremost fungi expert, Pam will share her considerable knowledge on the basics of identifying and describing different types of fungi and then show how she is applying these techniques to uncover new species in the State.