Newsletter No. 142 March 2010 Price: $5.00 Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 142 (March 2010) AUSTRALIAN SYSTEMATIC BOTANY SOCIETY INCORPORATED Council President Vice President Peter Weston Dale Dixon National Herbarium of New South Wales Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney Mrs Macquaries Road Mrs Macquaries Road Sydney, NSW 2000 Sydney, NSW 2000 Tel: (02) 9231 8171 Tel: (02) 9231 8111 Fax: (02) 9241 2797 Fax: (02) 9251 7231 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Treasurer Secretary Michael Bayly Gillian Brown School of Botany School of Botany The University of Melbourne, Vic. 3010 The University of Melbourne, Vic. 3010 Tel: (03) 8344 7150 Tel: (03) 8344 7150 Fax: (03) 9347 5460 Fax: (03) 9347 5460 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] or [email protected] Councillor Councillor Frank Zich Tanya Scharaschkin Australian Tropical Herbarium School of Natural Resource Sciences E2 building, J.C.U. Cairns Campus Queensland University of Technology PO Box 6811 PO Box 2434 Cairns, Qld 4870 Brisbane, Qld 4001 Tel: (07) 4059 5014 Tel: (07) 3138 1395 Fax: (07) 4091 8888 Fax: (07) 3138 1535 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Other Constitutional Bodies Public Officer Hansjörg Eichler Research Committee Annette Wilson Bill Barker Australian Bilogical Resources Study Betsy Jackes Dept of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts Greg Leach GPO Box 787 Kristina Lemson Canberra, ACT 2601 Chris Quinn Chair: Dale Dixon, Vice President Affiliate Society Grant applications close: 14 March 2010. Papua New Guinea Botanical Society ASBS Website www.anbg.gov.au/asbs Cover image: Alloxylon flammeum (Proteaceae), Webmaster: Murray Fagg reproduced with the permission of David Mackay (the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research artist) and RBG Sydney. Australian National Herbarium Email: [email protected] Publication dates of previous issue Austral.Syst.Bot.Soc.Newslett. 141 (December 2009 issue) Hardcopy: 12 Jan. 2010; ASBS Website: 28 Jan. 2010 Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 142 (March 2010) From the President I guess most members have emerged from their must deal in 2010. First of these is to announce summer breaks and got back into the swing of the completion of a project that was initiated by their botanical work by now. 2010 was barely former ASBS President, Marco Duretto: a new upon me when I had to resume preparing for ASBS web site. Last year, Marco and Kirsten my trip to South America for the VI Southern Cowley commissioned Siobhan Duffy, a graphic Connection Congress in Bariloche, Argentina and designer from the Visual Resources Unit of CSIRO for associated fieldwork and a herbarium visit. Plant Industry to redesign the Society’s website The conference was a great success, partly due to and the results should be “live” by the time this the impressive level of participation by Australian Newsletter is published. Present and past Council botanists, who presented a number of excellent members are very pleased with the result, which talks, including a fascinating plenary lecture is not only a lot more attractive to look at than the by Richard Hobbs, entitled “Invasive species previous version but is also easier to use and more and global change: novel ecosystems and their informative. Our hearty thanks go to Siobhan for implications for conservation and restoration”. her excellent work and patience and to Murray After the conference I paid a brief visit to the Fagg for his continuing work as webmaster. Museo de la Plata, just south of Buenos Aires to Quality assurance of the results of environmental meet with Jorge Crisci’s research group and to use consultants and accreditation of providers of their herbarium. I was mightily impressed by the biological identification were raised as significant high quality of their work and of their museum, problems at our Armidale conference. I wrote in which operates using fewer resources than any my previous column that we would be encouraging comparable institution in our country. The group further discussion and debate of these issues in of Australians with whom I travelled in Chile and the Newsletter this year. Jeremy Bruhl kicks this Argentina were fortunate to organise our field off with an article in this Newsletter announcing work before the conference, because 8 days after the development of a wiki online discussion site it finished the fifth worst earthquake on record devoted to the subject of accreditation and quality struck central Chile. Having driven down the main assurance in biological identification. Please have street of Concepcion only three weeks before the a look at the site and contribute your opinions. This quake, we felt great sympathy for the victims and is an important subject that needs to be discussed felt that we were lucky not to be among them. by people who know what they are talking about. Being busy with overseas travel has kept my mind It therefore needs the active involvement of ASBS off ASBS business for longer than I would like, so members. lately I have been catching up with some of the Peter Weston projects and problems with which ASBS Council From the Editors Gael Campbell-Young has recently received news Please contact Russell Barrett if you would be that she will be moving to the West earlier than willing to take on any or all of the above tasks to planned. Implications for the Newsletter are the ensure the smooth production of the Newsletter. need to find one or more members of the Society On behalf of the members, we thank Gael for her who can take on her editorial responsibilities for professional and timely support to the production the next issue and onwards. of the last six issues. CALL FOR INTEREST IN NEWSLETTER RB would like to apologise for the lateness of PROOFING, BOOK REVIEWS AND this issue, largely due to an unfortunately timed DISTRIBUTION MANAGEMENT computer failure just prior to travel commitments, combined with attemping to write a Ph.D... 1 Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 142 (March 2010) GCY would like to specially thank RB for his cheerful willingness to provide reviews. I have sustained hard work in producing the Newsletter thoroughly enjoyed participating in the production on behalf of the Society. Book reviewers are also of the Newsletter and look forward to keeping up thanked for their timely and quality contributions with all things taxonomic in the future. of reviews to the Newsletter and their constantly Articles The discovery and the Australian flora, and this is strongly reflected documentation of the eucalypts by the epithets of the species he named. No fewer of Queensland and New South than 27 of his accepted eucalypt species names from NSW or Qld commemorate botanists, Wales, 1896–1961 including E. banksii and E. benthamii. A.R. Bean Queensland Herbarium Richard T. Baker was Maiden’s assistant until 1896, when Maiden became Director of the Botanic In a previous article (Bean 2005), eucalypts were Gardens in Sydney, and Baker succeeded him as discussed for the time period 1770 to 1895. By the the head of the Technological Museum. Baker’s end of 1895, 68 of today’s accepted Queensland personality was described by Penfold (1941) as species had been named, and 80 species from New “energetic, fiery and dominating”. He was an South Wales. 1896 saw the end of the Muellerian economic botanist and chemist, and his studies in era, and the rise of new taxonomists in the study Eucalyptus taxonomy drew heavily on analyses of of eucalypts. For the next three decades, eucalypt oils and other compounds distilled from the leaves taxonomy was to be dominated by Joseph Maiden and bark of the various trees. Baker believed that and Richard Baker, both based in Sydney. eucalypt species “show, comparatively, not much variation, in fact, possess such a constancy of Maiden migrated to Australia in early 1881, and specific characters that is surprising in the light soon became a keen student of the Australian flora, of previous published literature on the Eucalypts” especially the wattles and “gum-trees”. In learning and that “the Eucalypts may be regarded as fairly about the profligate genusEucalyptus , he naturally invariate” (Baker & Smith 1920). This was the fell back on Bentham’s “Flora Australiensis” and core of a theory that he called the “constancy of Mueller’s “Eucalyptographia”. He corresponded species”. with the Baron on many occasions and sent him specimens for identification, but as Maiden’s Maiden and Baker profoundly disagreed in their knowledge of the genus increased, aided by his approach to taxonomy and species concept, and mentors Henry Deane and William Woolls, he a long-standing professional conflict soon arose. found some of Mueller’s identifications to be After 1896, the personal relationship between the “indefensible” (Gilbert 2001). two was apparently largely confined to official letters posted between their offices. Maiden became arguably the greatest ever eucalyptologist. He studied the minute details of In his publications, Maiden frequently remarked every part of the plant. He was perhaps the first to on the large amount of morphological variation realise the importance of the juvenile or “primary” in many species of eucalypt in different parts of leaves in the taxonomy and classification of their range. Maiden had a broader species concept eucalypts, though he graciously acknowledged than that prevailing today, and inevitably he Alfred Howitt as the first to publish on their placed some of Baker’s species into synonymy, diagnostic importance. His “Critical Revision of displeasing the latter immensely. Baker, in Baker the genus Eucalyptus” is a classic and many of the & Smith (1920), said “The reputed or supposed observations therein have stood the test of time.