FTBG Newsletter May 2013
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THE FRIENDS OF TREBORTH BOTANIC GARDEN CYFEILLION GARDD FOTANEG TREBORTH NEWSLETTER CYLCHLYTHYR Number / Rhif 47 May/ Mai 2013 COMMITTEE Judith Hughes ([email protected]) Chairman Dr David Shaw ([email protected]) Vice-Chair Sarah Edgar ([email protected]) Secretary Cathy Dixon ([email protected]) Treasurer Nigel Brown ([email protected]) Curator Rosie Barratt ([email protected]) Horticulturist Angela Thompson ([email protected]) Membership Secretary Dr John Gorham ([email protected]) Events Secretary Enid Griffith Committee Member Tom Cockbill ([email protected]) Committee Member David Evans ([email protected]) Committee Member James Stroud ([email protected]) Committee Member Ann Illsley ([email protected]) Committee Member Berta Rosen ([email protected]) Committee Member James Balfour ([email protected]) Committee Member Natalie Chivers ([email protected]) STAG Representative Matt Kent ([email protected]) STAG Representative NEWSLETTER TEAM John Gorham, Tom Cockbill (formatting, photos) email as above Grace Gibson (adverts, articles) [email protected] Angela Thompson (commissioning articles, email as above planning, editing) Cover Photos Front: Melliodendron xylocarpum (Styracaceae, China) flowers (Erle Randall) [p. 17] Back: Anthony Pigott hard at work botanising in Iceland (taken on the summit of Valahnúkur by Amy Davidson ) [p. 15] Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are copyright of the article author [page numbers in square brackets refer to the start of the relevant article] Images between articles are of the new wooden Garden area signs made by Peter Boyd Issue No. 47 May 2013 CONTENTS Chair’s Introduction 3 News in Brief 3 Friends Membership Subscription and Gift Aid 4 Curator’s Report 5 Weather and Wildlife 7 Scilly Weeds 9 A Postcard from Iceland 15 Two Botanic Gardens in British Columbia. Part 1 17 Renovation of the Rock Garden at Treborth 20 Taxonomy and Botanical Latin. Part 2 22 A Fossil Garden 26 Orchids at Treborth 28 New Hoyas and Haworthias 30 A Victim of its own Beauty?The Xaté Palm 34 A Moth Monitoring Year 38 Wild Science Day, March 2013 40 A Diary from the Garden of England 41 Moelyci Fruit Field 46 2 Chair’s Introduction When you read this newsletter in warm and sunny May, I hope the weather we had in late March will be a distant, unpleasant memory, and nature will be catching up with the season in hand, late spring. As I write this piece, my study is bathed in warm sunshine, but outside, the biting easterly wind and occasional flurry of snow tell a different story. The ground is held in an iron grip, seeds are still either in packets or reluctant to germinate, and those that have are very slow even under glass. This edition is full of interesting articles and I hope you enjoy reading it. The newsletter team has changed: we now have Tom Cockbill and John Gorham doing the overall formatting and photographs in place of Pete Wieland. We thank Pete very much for all his valuable work on the newsletter and wish him well in the future. Our newsletter is the showcase and shop window for Treborth, and our thanks must go to all those involved in its production. Judith Hughes And… News in Brief Donations: Many thanks to Gwenda Lucas-Jones for her donation to the Garden’s funds. Wollemia germination by Ann Wood: You may have heard of the discovery of the ‘fossil’ Wollemi Pine in Australia. It is a conifer but not a pine, so it’s better to refer to it by its scientific name, Wollemia nobilis. Wollemia was only known through fossil records until the Australian species Wollemia nobilis was discovered in 1994 in the temperate rainforest wilderness area of the Wollemi National Park in New South Wales, in a remote series of narrow, steep-sided sandstone gorges. It is critically endangered: fewer than a hundred trees are known to be growing wild, in three localities not far apart. A propagation programme made Wollemia specimens available to botanical gardens, first in Australia in 2006 and subsequently throughout the world. Treborth has two specimens: one is planted in the Garden at the foot of the rockery and the other is in a pot under glass in a ‘safe’ place. Last September, it was noticed that the outside plant had produced female cones which appeared to have seeds, although it was difficult to sort them out from scale tissue. This material was at first stored away and then, following advice from Crug Farm Nurseries, it was decided to try to get the seeds to germinate. Our volunteer, Ann Wood, was tasked with this operation. They were stratified in compost (perlite, New Horizon compost, John Innes seed compost, 1:1:1) in a fridge for 6 weeks, then brought out to a warm bench and covered with polythene to retain moisture. Two weeks later, there were signs of 3 activity! At regular intervals, 6 seedlings appeared, but unfortunately, only one now remains. It still has only two cotyledons (seed leaves) with a very tiny shoot in the middle, but, of course, it is pampered since we can claim to have the only home- grown Wollemia in Wales! Ann is now attempting to germinate another batch, so fingers crossed… And lastly, bees, although they should be first and foremost. So many species of bees, including bumblebees, are threatened in their natural environment, mainly from habitat destruction. But the honeybee is having a really tough time of it, with mysterious colony collapse disorder and the varroa mite spreading lethal viruses. Now there is mounting evidence that new nerve-agent pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, aimed at recognised agricultural pests, are killing bees. Since bees and other insects pollinate about three quarters of our food, it is vital that we protect them, and various pressure groups such as 38 Degrees and environmental organisations like Buglife are pressing the UK government and the EU to ban their use. By the time you read this newsletter, the major decisions regarding this will have been taken, but this is an issue that will rumble on, and the vested interests of the vastly rich and huge agri-chemical industry will be shouting very loudly to allow these compounds. So please, if you see campaigns aimed at protecting the honeybee, do support them! Angela Thompson, Committee Friends’ Membership Subscriptions and Gift Aid Many of you have kindly stated on your membership forms that you wish your subscriptions to the Friends to be treated as donations as part of the HMRC’s Gift Aid scheme. This enables us to reclaim currently 25p in every pound of your subs for use in the Garden at no extra cost to yourselves if you pay income tax and /or capital gains tax at least equal to the tax we can reclaim each year. This is a really useful amount of money for our ongoing work here. But sometimes it is not clear on the forms, especially in the case of joint membership, just who is paying the tax! In addition, people who joined the Friends before we became a charity will not have completed a Gift Aid declaration and will need to do so now. Therefore, could everybody who is a taxpayer (except those of you with single membership and who have joined in the last two years) please fill in the enclosed form and return it to Treborth. We shall be putting this form on our website for those members who access the newsletter online. With clearer records, this could well increase our income from this source. Thank you! Angela Thompson, Membership Secretary 4 Curator’s Report: December 2012 – March 2013 It is pleasing to report that Bangor University will be offering a brand new MSc course from September 2013 – in Plant Conservation – and that Treborth Botanic Garden will be an essential element of the academic and practical contents of the course, which will be of interest to graduates in a variety of subjects including biology, ecology, and horticulture. I am thrilled that as well as attracting wide- scale support from my colleagues in the University, especially the School of Environment and Natural Resources and Geography (SENRGY), the new MSc will also benefit from the active participation of a number of outside agencies including Kew, the National Botanic Garden of Wales and Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Although the first year’s intake will be a modest sized cohort of mainly Wales’ based graduates, recruitment is planned to go global in September 2014. I look forward to closely involving the Friends with this new postgraduate course which should strengthen the academic standing of Treborth well into the future and help train a new generation of plant conservationists in the theory and practice of plant conservation biology. It is also pleasing to report that the so-called Cool House has been renovated and is now fit for use as a teaching and events space. Almost immediately, it proved invaluable during Wild Science Day (see James Balfour’s report). One of the main attractions of Treborth is the ability to teach on site - the old ‘lab’ has performed this function admirably since 1979 but is sometimes stretched to cope with demand. The Cool House will now take some of the pressure off the ‘lab’ and allow the Botanic Garden to cater for not only more visitors at a time but offer a wider variety of activities. Visitors will notice that the roof panes have been replaced with a tough but flexible laminate which is safer. The adjacent ‘Small House’ is scheduled for demolition in the very near future due to concerns over its safety and will not be immediately replaced until overall plans for that area have been finalised.