The Great Confusion: Australian Plants

It has been over a year now that I made the big move to Terra Australis Incognita. Unfortunately, I feel no wiser since, in particular with respect to many of the native plants.

Having learnt to weed out Tradescantia and Ehrharta in bushcare sessions at the local reserve, the staggering wealth of native plants (apparently more in the Sydney region alone and in the UK altogether (source: info plate in Botanical Garden Sydney) still remains rather concealed to me. Confused by all the gum trees, wattles and grasses, my knowledge of the greenery around me is pitiable.

Fortunately, there’s an app course for it. Provided by the Lane Cove Council (for example, sure other councils would offer similar ones) it comes in form of a 4-hour workshop. Lead by experienced bushcarers and accompanied by excellent course material, both common native plants and notorious weeds, probably even more common in the end, are covered in botanical detail.

It is by no means a gardening workshop, even though a few tips and tricks on how to grow natives (or kill the weeds) are included.

From theory and singular plant specimen to practice and the bush. Meaning not just one plant exhibiting identification characteristics beautifully, but all of them – good and bad, or easily confused ones – at once.

That’s where it got tough again. And where successfully identifying a Commelina cyanea from a Tradescantia fluminensis feels like an achievement.

Commelina cyanea (image by MargaretsFamily on flickr)

Tradescantia fluminensis (image by Mollivan Jon on flickr)

The native plant and week identification course is a great start or refresher and provides a lot of help (workbooks and brochures) and encouragement to go out again and open one’s eyes to the beautiful Australian flora.

For upcoming workshops, check the Lane Cove Council website or the North Sydney Council Bushcare Calendar.

Finally, a shrub with a name: Westringia longifolia

It is frustrating to not know your plants. As if shops and restaurants had no names. How to desribe to a friend where the coffee is really good or in which store window you saw that lovely dress on sale?

Luckily, some plants around our apartment block still wear their name tag. So I can firmly say that a very healthy-looking Westringia longifolia (of course, one of those native Australian plants I had never heard of before!) is in full bloom.

Westringia longifolia bush

Here is a close-up of the little white flowers.

Westringia longifolia flowers

PlantNET provides more information on this species for the taxonomically interested.

 

A desktop with a purpose

It’s the little things that can make a lasting difference.

I find one of these little things is having a customized desktop background displayed that reminds you of the good things, the happy moments. In between all the clickings and clackings it gives me a moment of my own space, of peace and quiet.

Naturally, most of the pictures on my desktop are from the outdoors, of plants mainly, and a few landscapes. Looking at them brings me back to the place where I took the picture. That’s important – not that it is a great picture (even though I am proud of my good shots), but for the picture to work I have to associate a place and experience with it.

But enough words. Allow me to share a particularly vibrant image with you: that of a bright yellow plant flowering in the courtyard of the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. Bon voyage (wherever your thoughts may take you)!

Bright and yellow at the National Museum of Cambodia

 

Mendel’s peas – when life was easy

Today the Google doodle reminds us of a famous plant scientist – Gregor Mendel.

Doodle honouring Gregor Mendel

While many see in Mendel the father of modern genetics, an example scientist (for both biased and unbiased) research, I personally associate with him first of all the revelation that biology is not as easy as they try to tell you.

At school pupils count and segregate colour and shape according to Mendel. All adds up – such is life at this point, simplified, easy. Not to forget about the biological facts set down in laws that can be memorized and that’s it.

But, to quote one of my favourite science writers ‘I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that’.

Experimenting and learning about biology means predominantly that things don’t add up, they don’t work, or at least not the way imagined. Life turns out to be neither easy nor straight forward. As to the laws they are to be questioned, reconfirmed or overthrown.

Life is great and alive this way – this is exactly what Gregor Mendel reminds me of.

 

Entering Terra Australis

It’s been a while – this must be one of the most frequently written sentences on blogs.

The reasons in my case being several: relocation to the other end of the world, down under that is, new job (again not related to biology or plants), and a major confusion about the surrounding flora.

Beautiful and bizarre as they may be, not seeing Asteracea come out in autumn and leaves fall in winter has been extremely confusing.

Indeed, winter here (Sydney) means that most of the plants have not shed their foliage. Only a few park- and street-planted trees showed the familiar fall colors. But for the rest: green and lush as ever – and what’s more: some of them even flowering!

In ignorance of names, here are a few of the pictures taken now two weekends ago on the scenic coastal walk from Spit Bridge to Manly.

Flora australis

Flora australis

Flora australis

Flora australis

Photo Friday: the glowing bottle brush

From the monsoon in South India we arrive in South Australia to a dry spring. Even though the drought has been broken with a spell of wet weather – finally – the native vegetation couldn’t be more different.

Instead of vivid, intense green leaves of generous sizes, the native flora presents itself with small, hardened leaves that are shielded by reflective hairs appearing in silvery to grey green or that are protected by thick cuticles rendering dark green shades.

Unidentified - possibly a convolvulus



Spring has sprung!
It is a good time for the thirsty land and flora. And otherwise timidly flowering plants boast their beauty.

A regular favourite, the bottle brush is in full bloom: Having only seen it in Europe the sheer size and radiance of the trees are striking.

But it is the brush with its glistening spikes that takes the Photo Friday prize!

Brushes in the sky

Photo Friday: Echinacea purpurea

Who wouldn’t recognize these slightly droopy pink-purple flowers as Echinacea purpurea? Less probably so in 1787 when Rudbeckia purpurea as it was known at the time featured on plate 2 of the newly launched “Botanical Magazine“.

Echinacea purpurea in the William Curtis history bed

The Botanical Magazine became posthumously known after its founder William Curtis and still continues today as the longest running publication of original botanical art under the name of “Curtis’s Botanical Magazine“.

Having failed to excite readers for his (with 5s for the coloured edition quite expensive [1]) Flora Londinensis, a journal featuring flora growing within a 10-mile radius of London, Curtis turned to documenting (at 1s better-selling) ornamental exotics in his newly launched periodical [1].

The centerpiece of the journal are the hand-coloured plates of which more than 11,000 have been produced [2]. Many acclaimed artists contributed to the journal. The chief artist during the early ears was Sydenham Edwards who alone produced over 1,600 of the 1,721 plates that appeared in the magazine in its first 28 years [3].

Thanks to the Project Gutenberg we can scroll through the first volume of the journal and admire its beautiful plates for free.

Volumes 1 through 26, published from 1787 to 1807, as well as some selected images including detailed descriptions can also be found online at the National Agricultural Library and the National Agricultural Library’s Photo Image Project respectively.

The Chelsea Physic Garden commemorates William Curtis as the Praefectus Horti and Demonstrator of Plants at the garden from 1772 to 1777. He is remembered in one of the historical beds in the Chelsea Physic Garden: Here, plants that he first introduced to Great Britain or named as well as plants shown in early editions of the Botanical Magazine are displayed. This bed is one of the 2 (possibly 3?) spots where E. purpurea can be found in the garden.

Label of Echinacea purpurea in William Curtis's commemorative bed

[1] Sue Minter, The Apothecaries’ Garden – a history of the Chelsea Physic Garden, Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2003
[2] GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DEPARTMENT, Book of the Month
October 2004 Curtis’s Botanical Magazine
[3] King’s College London; Exhibition: “NATURE OBSERVED: THE WORK OF THE BOTANICAL ARTIST”; Case 3: William Curtis and The Botanical Magazine

Not quoted above, but worth a read: “Zur Geschichte der ältesten botanischen Zeitschrift der Welt” auf Simone’s Hoyas Webseite (in German).

Buddleja bee hotspot

Thy typical railside Buddleia tends to be a Buddleja davidii or “Butterfly Bush” variant, originally found in the mountains near the Tibetan-Chinese border in 1869 by the French missionary Père David. After a hesitant start with apparently weak early imports, propagation caught on at the turn of the century [1].

Looking at front yards, waste grounds and railway lines in England now, it’s hard to believe that Buddleja is not a plant at all native to Europe. Its 100 something species colonize the warmer parts of the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Buddleja, the invasive species
As Margarete points our in her vividly illustrated blog entry, Buddlejas are easy to care for, not fussy as it comes to soil and habitat. They do like it warm and sunny though, but don’t require intensive watering. ACD Arboriculture consultant Mark even suggests Buddleja to be considered as a plant for future climate change landscaping. Whether hotter, drier weather and/or effective propagation, Buddlejas are found on the list of invasive species in the UK and US.

Buddleja, the bee hotspot
On a sunny summer day, Buddlejas are a bee, butterfly and moth hotspot providing nectar and pollen for a variety of pollinators. It’s a humming and buzzing affair! Careful though: Standing next to one means you’re in a busy flight path

Buddleja bee hotspot

Apart from the mainly decorative B. davidii, the Chelsea Physic Garden, contains a shrub of the medicinally used B. officinalis. It’s all in the name: B. officinalis has been used to treat a variety of illnesses from gonorrhoea and hepatitis [2] to headaches and inflammatory diseases e.g. in traditional Korean medicine. And reasearch continues into its various medicinally active compounds [3].

[1] Richard Mabey, FLORA BRITANNICA the concise edition, 1998
[2] www.pfaf.org, Plants For A Future, 1996-2008
[3] Lee et al., Biol Pharm Bull. 2006

Photo Friday – how wonderful!

There’s the institutional FollowFriday the jolly FunFriday and only today I found out about PhotoFriday. It goes without saying that PhotoFriday here is all about plants, and because it rhymes about flowers.

Today’s picture was taken on Wednesday in the Chelsea Physic Garden. The Monocots construction site has now given way to the Jamaican beds (more on this later). And in the middle of that there is this truly wonderful Mirabilis:

Mirabilis jalapa 'Buttermilk'

So far so good. Only that the picture above had to change! Because it was utterly wrong and complete nonsense to display a hibiscus variety – even nameless, bought at some Covent Garden flower shop – in lieu of the true Mirabilis.
MEA CULPA! Shame on me and please forgive me, dear reader, for this glitch.

More than simply pretty to look at M. jalapa seems to show useful – “peculiar” as Peng and co-authors describe it – tolerance to petroleum (and other) soil contaminations. It may therefore be a wonderful candidate for phytoremediation.

A shielded spot next to the Dragon Tree

It’s mid April and still, after this harsh winter, only few plants are out. Even more of a surprise then to see the Dragon Tree Dracaena draco whose natural habitat is Macaronesia with a rather unusual and spiky head cover.

Dracaena Draco

Look at those berries!
According to Wikipedia, Dragon Trees generally flower at night. However, in many pictures taken during the day, the flowers appear open… D. draco’s flowering season is in July and August. So I suppose the remaining berries are leftovers from last year. Or even the year before last year – Dean points out in this excellent post (have a read through the comments!) on how to grow D. draco that it takes a good year for the berries to ripen!

On Tenerife the fruits are made into wine, as is pointed out in this blog post. What does it taste like?
Apart from that I couldn’t find anything describing the berries as either a food or medicine source. Are they edible off the tree?

Dracaena Draco - fruits

I stumbled upon an interesting fact about the berries when reading through the information provided by The Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk (PIER) on D. draco: “…Dragon Tree fruits were the main food of an endemic, Dodo-like, flightless bird which is now extinct. Related to the pigeon, it was about the size of a turkey. Because of the extinction of the species, naturally occurring Dragon Trees are becoming very rare. The processing of Dragon Tree seeds through the digestive tract of this bird helped stimulate germination – without this aid, seed must be manually processed in order to sprout.”

Dragon’s blood
Dragon’s blood is harvested by cutting the bark or the leaves of D. draco. The at first colourless sap turns into a red resin when exposed to air and sunlight. The Dragon Tree is not the only natural source of dragon’s blood. No less than 17 different species are known to yield the red resin, including

• D. cinnabari, a tree of up to 10m height native to Socotra;
• several Croton species belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family;
• some Daemonorops species who are part of a genus of rattan palms from Southeast Asia;
• Pterocarpus officinalis from the Fabaceae family and the rattan palm Calamus rotang.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that a substance of that colour resulted in it being used to treat a big variety of diseases and illnesses: From treating scurvy and wounds externally to using it internally for diarrhea, mouth and stomach ulcers as well as respiratory diseases. Dragon’s blood looks back on a long history with first records dating from the 1st century BC.

Today, compounds in dragon’s blood from different natural sources are analyzed for their biological functions. González et al. (J Nat Prod. 2003) report on 20 isolated compounds, some of them with potent cytotoxic activities. Among them is dracorhodin, a major constituent of Daemonorops draco resin. Dracorhodin an analogues have been researched for their pharmaceutical potential, as they exhibit antimicrobial, antiviral, antitumor and cytotoxic activities (Shi et al., J Sep Sci. 2009 and citations therein).

A very recent study by Heo et al. (Food Chem Toxicol. 2010) indicates that a specific fraction of Daemonorops draco resin may have the potential for use as an anti-atherosclerosis agent.

Obviously, at this stage, further research is needed to fully evaluate the potential effects of dragon’s blood. As always with plants used in traditional medicine it will be interesting to see which effects can actually be scientifically proven and which additional uses may emerge!

The Dracaena draco tree at the Chelsea Physic Garden