Herbarium crew driven by excitement of discoveries
DANIEL BATEMAN ONE of the biggest changes to the Australian Tropical Herbarium during the past 10 years has been greater interaction with the general public.
Outreach is an important facet of the herbarium, which helps the public and special interest groups identify northern Queensland’s plants. The herbarium also has plant identification keys to assist in identifying all manner of flora.
Curator Frank Zich, who is among the longest serving staff at the facility, said scientists were frequently out in the field carrying out mapping or botanical surveys.
However, he said every now and then a member of the public brought in a specimen that stumped even the experts.
“It happened in 2010,” he said. “John Elliott, a plant enthusiast in Townsville, was walking on Mt Stuart and found a group of trees that he couldn’t identify.
“He took it to (plant expert) Betsy Jackes at JCU in Townsville, and she couldn’t identify it, so it was sent here and we also couldn’t identify it, either.
“We weren’t very sure of the family for a while, and then one of our staff extracted DNA and then once we had the DNA, he did his magic to compare that to the library to work out that it was a new species no one had collected before.”
The Far Northern area of responsibility for other longterm staff, such as principal botanist Eda Addicott and technical officer Mark Newton, is as big as the whole British landmass.