SEM of the a cluster of coronulate papillae on the lower leaf surface of Akania bidwillii. Image: J.G. Conran.

Today, the State Herbarium of South Australia published one article in the online version of Swainsona.

J.M. Bannister & J.G. Conran, Comparative leaf morphology and cuticular anatomy of Akania bidwillii (Akaniaceae) (6.7mb PDF)

The authors publish an illustrated description of the leaves of the monotypic genus Akania, which is endemic to eastern Australia. Together with the the genus Bretschneidera from China, Vietnam and India, which is also monotypic, it forms the small family Akaniaceae.

This paper presents the first detailed analysis of the leaf and cuticle morphology of the species. The results are compared to recently discovered Akaniaceae fossil leaves from South America. This year, the authors also published a paper on the first discovery of fossil Akania inflorescence and flowers from New Zealand.

Akania bidwillii, growing in rainforest at Hayters Hill Nature Reserve, N.S.W. Photo: J.G. Conran.

To access content of all volumes of Swainsona and the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens since Vol. 1 (1976), please visit the journal’s web-site at flora.sa.gov.au/swainsona.

Several years ago, the State Herbarium of South Australia published Grasses of South Australia by J.P. Jessop, G.R.M. Dashorst & F.M. James in collaboration with Wakefield Press. This is the well-known standard work on the grass family Poaceae for the State and can also be used in adjacent regions of other States.

KeyBase is a database and web application for managing and deploying interactive pathway keys. It presents traditional dichotomous keys in a new way online. In addition to standalone keys, KeyBase also delivers identification keys to the new  online Flora of Australia and VicFlora.

Keys to the South Australian Flora are currently being added to Keybase. Last week, Kat Ticli from the State Herbarium completed the conversion of the keys to species in Grasses of South Australia and uploaded them to KeyBase. Poaceae is one of the largest plant families in the State. Having this key and others online will enable easy access to this information and be helpful to anyone wanting to identify the native and naturalised grasses of South Australia.

Click here to enter the Grasses of South Australia KeyBase project.

Last month, Dr Andrew Thornhill started working at the State Herbarium of South Australia.  Originally from Melbourne, Andrew studied and worked at Monash University (Melbourne), the Australian National University, Australian National Herbarium and CSIRO (all Canberra), the Australian Tropical Herbarium (Cairns), the University of California (Berkeley, USA) and the federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (Canberra). In his current position, he is working for both, The University of Adelaide and the State Herbarium on a variety of projects, including the analysis of molecular data-sets and re-organisation of the Herbarium’s bryophyte collection.

In 2011, Andrew started a project on creating a complete species level phylogeny of the eucalypts (which include the genera Eucalyptus, Angophora and Corymbia). The idea was to sample DNA for as many eucalypt species as possible, combine that data and see how all of the species were related to each other. This week, over seven years later, the project was published.

Thornhill, A.H., Crisp, M.D., Külheim, C., Lam, K.E., Nelson, L.A., Yeate,s D.K., Miller, J.T. (2019). A dated molecular perspective of eucalypt taxonomy, evolution and diversification. Australian Systematic Botany 32: 29-48.

Eucalyptus porosa. Photo: Clive M. Chesson.

There are over 800 described eucalypt species in the world and we are close to soon having 900. Around 1/8th of the total number of eucalypt species are native to South Australia and they grow in the arid and forest areas in an array of habits, be it mallees or trees up in the hills.

The paper presents a dated phylogeny of the Australian eucalypts and a diversification analysis to show if any parts of the eucalypt phylogeny have had accelerated diversification. What Andrew and his colleagues found was that many of the species that grow in the arid and forest areas of southern and south-eastern Australia have only evolved in the last two million years, this includes many of the eucalypt species that grow in South Australia. Their origin comes due to a divergence with Western Australian eucalypts, but that’s not to say that Western Australia is where eucalypts originated. There are even deeper splits in the history of eucalypts that suggests that either south-west Western Australia or south-east Queensland could be the source of origin. One way to find this out may be by finding new ‘oldest’ fossils in either of these places, which would help provide evidence that eucalypts grew there in the deep past.

The results of this research are also discussed by Andrew in an article in The Conversation. The treatment for eucalypts in the new, 5th edition of the Flora of South Australia is also available (33.7mb PDF).

Today, the State Herbarium of South Australia published two article in the online version of Swainsona.

Utricularia dichotoma. Photo: J.G.Conran.

(1) J.G. Conran, Weird and wonderful plants of South Australia (2.3mb PDF)

This article is published in Vol. 30 of the journal, which contains the Proceedings of the Botany Symposium “Botany 2016 — Past, present and future“, held at the 2016 NRM Science Conference, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the State Herbarium.

John Conran‘s contribution to the Conference was an overview of interesting plants in the State. He discusses tiny Trithuria plants, carnivorous sundews, triggerplants with spring-loaded pollination mechanisms, parasitic plants like mistletoes, quandongs and snotty gobbles, and many others.

(2) P.S. Catcheside & D.E.A. Catcheside, CORRIGENDUM to: A new species of small black disc fungi, Smardaea australis (Pezizales, Pyronemataceae), is described from Australia (430kb PDF)

This articles corrects an error in the description of a fungus species that was published in Vol. 31 in June 2017. The original article is available here (1.8mb PDF).

To access content of all volumes of Swainsona and the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens since Vol. 1 (1976), please visit the journal’s web-site at flora.sa.gov.au/swainsona.