Category Archives: News

Plant Expert to Visit Eyre Peninsula

Chris Brodie in weeds

State Herbarium of South Australia weeds botanists Chris Brodie will be visiting Eyre Peninsula next week. He will be making collections of weeds along with running workshops for our keen environmentalists.

Chris will visit Wudinna, Streaky Bay, Elliston, Port Lincoln, Tumby Bay, Cleve, Cowell and Whyalla between the 21st and 25th of July 2014 and is encouraging local volunteers and plant enthusiasts to collect a weed or plant of interest for the workshops.

The visit is funded by the Eyre Peninsula NRM Board.  Senior Natural Resources Officer, Iggy Honan, is helping to organise the visit. “The focus of this visit is to promote the Herbarium and get some good specimens of plants and for the collection,” he said.  The botanist will be collecting some of the region’s worst weeds, and any potential new weeds that could threaten our native plants and wildlife.

“Chris will be driving around Eyre Peninsula collecting plants along the way for the State’s Herbarium plant collection which is an important record of the flora we have in this area—some of which is not found anywhere else in the world,” Mr Honan said.

For more information contact an Eyre Peninsula NRM office or the State Herbarium of South Australia.

Weedy lovegrass identity confirmed

Herbarium wing, RBG Kew (photo C.J. Brodie)

State Herbarium Weeds Botanist Chris Brodie recently visited the African grass specialist Tom Cope at the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, while on holiday in England. Chris had previously sent some lovegrass (Eragrostis) specimens from Adelaide to Kew that could not be reliably identified to species level using the Australian literature. Specimens sent were plants first noticed by Natural Resources (NRM) staff from Adelaide & Mount Lofty Ranges, the South East & Eyre Peninsula regions as well as plants from SA Murray-Darling Basin region.

The unknown plants turned out to be a part of the Eragrostis curvula (Schrad.) Nees complex, also commonly known as African lovegrass, a declared plant under the Natural Resources Management Act 2004.

African grass specialist Tom Cope said that this species is very variable in habit and he was certain that “this can be nothing else other than E. curvula“.

Chris said “the time spent in Kew and knowledge gained there has greatly improved our understanding of the variability that exists within this taxon in South Australia. To identify this grass, we know now to only look for the hard rigid base with many dense long hairs and at flower characters. All other features of the plant, such as stem thickness, branching, height, general habit and colour, can vary so much that superficially different races of this grass can even look like different species when side by side”.

Eragrostis curvula (photo C.J. Brodie)

Tom Cope also confirmed the identity of Eragrostis trichophora Coss. & Durieu, within the species complex he is calling Eragrostis cylindriflora Hochst. These plants were collected just north of Adelaide and to the west of Eyre Peninsula. The first Herbarium record for Eragrostis trichophora in South Australia dates from mid-2012 from the Eyre Peninsula.

Chris is currently working on a fact sheet for identifying Eragrostis curvula and a paper on the weedy Eragrostis taxa and their variability in South Australia. Until then, as usual, please contact Chris regarding weedy plant identification.

Two new bladderworts for South Australia

State Herbarium botanist Peter Lang reports that two recently described species of bladderwort  (Utricularia) have been added to the Census of South Australian plants, algae & fungi. Bladderworts are carnivorous plants that have leaves modified to form small bladder-like traps.

Utricularia fenshamii is remarkable in being almost entirely confined to mound springs of the Lake Eyre Basin, and in South Australia is only found on such springs just beyond the northern edge of the Flinders Ranges.

Utricularia barkeri was named after Bill Barker, Honorary Associate and former Chief Botanist at the State Herbarium, who had made annotations on herbarium sheets in the mid 1980s to indicate differences from the more common U. dichotoma, with which it often grows.  In South Australia it is found in the South-Eastern and Kangaroo Island regions.

The photos show flowers of Utricularia fenshamii (top image) compared to the more common U. dichotoma (bottom), in which it was previously included.

Utricularia fenshamii (Photo by SA Seed Conservation Centre)

Utricularia dichotoma (Photo by P.J. Lang)

Open House Adelaide 2014 update

Today we saw the second two groups of this years Open House visitors in the Herbarium, a mix of locals, people from interstate and overseas. Together with yesterday’s guests we’ve seen over 90 people through to have a look at the herbarium both as an old tram barn but also as modern, working herbarium. To any that are unaware the State Herbarium of South Australia is housed in the heritage-listed, 1909-built Tram Barn A building.
Open House 2014


The Open House tours were very well received. People took photographs, including aspects of the building not commonly seen, and of herbarium display material, like specimens collected on the Flinders Expedition in 1802. Presentations covered a wide range of topics including type specimens, preservation techniques, insect pest control in the vaults, weed monitoring, historic specimens, insights from molecular (DNA) data and the Herbarium’s contribution to the Global Plants Initiative.
Open House 2014

4th South Australian Weeds Conference

WMMSSANext 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.