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Environment
Articles
IT IS THURSDAY the 17th of April, and we have come in to Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens to spend the day with the Senior Research scientist here, Ken Hill.
The Royal Botanic Gardens are tucked away between the picturesque shores of Sydney Harbour and the CBD, although one would not know it while in the Gardens. The only hint to its metropolitan neighbourhood is the protrusion of sky-scrapers through the canopy of palms. Yet, this urban Eden does more than offer an escape from the hustle and bustle. Its mission is much nobler.
Ken works with a diverse team of scientists in The National Herbarium of New South Wales, which is located within the Gardens. He has been here for close to twenty years. In this time, he has attained a worldwide reputation as a respected and knowledgeable scientist in his field of taxonomic botany.
As Ken arrives at the Herbarium, he gives us a quick tour of the facilities: offices, labs, specimen shelves, map rooms, dark rooms, the electron microscope, library – a huge work space with multitudinous resources for their research. He promises to revisit them later in the day. But first, he has a coffee while he checks his e-mails. Ken receives e-mails from around the globe -- from other international gardens and private plant collectors to small-time horticulturists. They are mainly inquiries concerned with plant identification, most of which Ken replies to immediately, while some require reference to the plant specimens on-site.
Another morning routine is revising botanical articles for publication in refereed scientific journals. He shows us a report that has recently arrived from the Herbarium of Western Australia’s journal, NUYSTA. A quick flick-through reveals a thorough ecological study of a small cross section within New South Wales. “Three of these have arrived in the past fortnight,” Ken reveals, “and there are many more to come. This team intends to cover the entire of NSW in the same detail!”
Journals, however, are an intrinsic part on taxonomy. Ken shows us the large collection of journals and books shelved in the Herbarium Library, several of which he has contributed to. The Herbarium, for example, publishes their own journal, Telopea, and is involved with the publication of numerous other refereed journals. They are also currently working on the publication of Flora of Australia, a huge endeavour to document every Australian species with illustrations, maps and descriptions. This is one of the Garden’s primary focuses at present, ambitious considering the huge diversity of Australian flora that has already been identified, as well as the constant discovery of new species, which Ken estimates to be at a hundred per year.
He then takes us to some of the older archives. “There is a lot of history in botany… We have books going back 400 years.” Ken points out some of the plant names, often the original names given to the plants that have endured to this day. “The names given to some of these species were derived from specimens that were often not kept. These drawings here are the only record we have. These drawings are the ‘type’ specimens,” Ken explains, highlighting the importance of these records.
A “type” specimen is the ultimate example of a given species. It is what the taxonomist uses to name the plant and define the species-specific characteristics. To illustrate the importance of type specimens, Ken guides us through the specimen shelves. Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens have the most comprehensive collection of New South Wales plants. There are over a million dried specimens boxed and shelved over three stories. Of these, 35,000 are type specimens.
After lunch, Ken shows us another of the Garden’s main endeavours; the publication of the outstanding Flora of Australia has taken to the web, and a huge proportion of Ken’s afternoon is spent updating the site. A very impressive prototype version is already accessible to the public at
http://plantnet.rbgsyd.gov.au/PlantNet/NSWflora.
According to Ken, nothing this comprehensive and extensive has yet been established by Sydney’s Gardens, let alone any herbarium worldwide. Nevertheless, the emerging trend is certainly toward making such resources widely available. Ken himself has undertaken a few personal undertakings to this end. His two pet projects to date include updating the already established and successful ‘Cycad Pages’, and creating an online database identification procedure specifically for Australian Eucalypts. With the latter, the national development of a ‘virtual herbarium’, linking the databases of each state herbarium in Australia, has been a great help.
The Internet has proven to enrich the exchange of information in botany to no end. Similarly, technological advances have facilitated a number of new directions for research.
“Botany has changed a lot. Throughout its history, there have been many trends and ideas… It has been revolutionised lately by DNA and cladistic studies. These concepts have been developing for forty years, but now with the adequate technology it has exploded into this field.” Ken’s current PhD studies, focusing on the bio-informatics involved with cycads, highlight one such departure from traditional botanical methods. As he settles in to his research, we see that he has a lot of work to do.
And on that
note, we leave Senior Research scientist, Ken Hill, to contend with the
daily multitude of developments and tasks. I wonder how he can keep up
with it all. I guess it is all in a day’s work.
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