Australia’s Virtual Herbarium (AVH) provides access to the plant specimen data held by Australian herbaria, enabling detailled mapping of plant distributions. Last week, the new version of AVH was released. It comes with significant interface improvements, additional querying capabilities and a new design that also works well on small screens and portable devices. Please read the AVH News item for more information.

AVH is an initiative of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria and pools the collection data of about 7 million specimens from Australia’s major herbaria, data for over 5 mio of these is already available online.

Kunzea toelkenii

A new species of New Zealand kānuka genus Kunzea was named after State Herbarium Hon. Associate Dr Hellmut Toelken.  Peter de Lange, botanist at the New Zealand Department of Conservation, published the results of a 15-year study examining Kunzea ericoides, a taxon that was thought to be shared between New Zealand and Australia.  De Lange examined the plants with traditional herbarium studies, hybridisation, molecular and ecological studies.  It turned out that K. ericoides does not occur in Australia, and that there are actually ten different species in New Zealand, seven of which were newly described in his revision, among them Kunzea toelkenii de Lange.  Hellmut Toelken is joint author of four of the new species and combinations in the paper, and was acknowledged by Peter de Lange for his long-standing research interest in Kunzea and his contributions to the taxonomy of the genus.

The State Herbarium of South Australia wishes all its friends, volunteers and Hon. Associates a happy Christmas break and all the best for the New Year.  We hope to see you all again in 2015.

This week, on 9 Dec. 2014, over 90 current and former staff members, volunteers, plant collectors, State Herbarium friends and other guests gathered in the National Wine Centre of Australia to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the State Herbarium of South Australia. This also launched a year of celebrations, with other functions, seminars and talks being planned for 2015.

The State Herbarium was established in 1954 by bringing together several different herbaria from The University of Adelaide, the South Australian Museum and other private and institutional collections.  With about 1.035 million specimens, it is now one of the largest herbaria in Australia.

The Celebrations started with an acknowledgment of the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Adelaide area by State Herbarium Manager Peter Canty. This was followed by Helena Jenkinson from the Board of the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium, who welcomed everyone to the function. Chief Botanist Prof. Michelle Waycott, then spoke about the history of the State Herbarium and its function today. Continue reading →