Agricultural
3 December, 2024
Seed collecting trip aims to future safeguard Warrumbungles flora
A group of eight leading botanists toured the Warrumbungles recently on a seed collecting trip aimed at future-proofing unique flora located in the popular national park.
The team from the Botanic Gardens of Sydney were targeting species they don’t currently have in their collections that are endemic to the area from November 4 to November 8.
Dr Nathan Emery, the manager seedbank and conservation collections at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, was part of the touring team that also included the organisation’s chief scientist and chief executive.
The team traversed the Breadknife Walking Track and Tara Cave and also accessed remote Warrumbungle fire trials where there is a lack of plant species.
“The key goal is to make seed collections of species that are either not represented or under-represented in the conservation seedbank,” Dr Emery said.
“Where seeds are not yet ready to be collected, we will make notes on what the plants are, where they are and determine how long it might take for those seeds to be ripe.
“This will increase the knowledge and also help us to plan to come back and make more collections.
“The other goal is to collect voucher specimens to take back to the NSW herbarium so that we have verifiable records of plant species out here and also to see what is producing viable fruit and seeds so we can come back here and do more targeted collecting.”
A herbarium is a systematically arranged collection of preserved plant specimens, often used for scientific study.
By the end of the trip, the team had made 20 seed collections and obtained 30 voucher specimens, including hop bushes, wattles, grevillias and even some wetland species.
On the hunt for Warrumbungles Range Wattle (Acacia Forsythii)
One of the key species the group was looking for was the Warrumbungles Range Wattle (Acacia Forsythii). This wattle is only found in the Warrumbungles and a few other areas outside.
“We were unsuccessful in finding this species. But this is not unexpected. It can take several attempts to successfully find a rare plant and collect seeds from it,” Dr Emery said.
“It’s a narrow range plant species that’s endemic to this region.”
Dr Emery explained the importance of seed collections.
“If those plants disappear from the wild from bad bushfire or climate change in the future, we can access those seeds at a later date, grow more plants to ensure we don’t lose the species to the landscape,” he said.
Warrumbungles tours are great learning opportunities for Botanic Gardens of Sydney team
The Botanic Gardens of Sydney team travels to the Warrumbungles annually.
The NSW Seedbank has 13,000 seed collections which represents around one-fifth of Australia’s flora and 50 per cent of this state’s.
It is the largest conservation seed collection in Australia.
“However, there are still quite a lot of plant species we don’t have in that collection that we’d like to target and prioritise moving forward,” Dr Emery said.
He added the Botanic Gardens of Sydney are keen to secure Western NSW plant species and ensure there is less of a “eastern seaboard bias”.
“It’s a great learning opportunity for us as a team,” Dr Emery said.
“From our organisation’s perspective, it’s important that we continue to focus on Western NSW and the plants that make up the unique vegetation communities here.”
Aside from ensuring Western NSW flora is prioritised, Dr Emery outlined that seed collections and voucher specimens of the more locally endemic species to this region are critical for future prosperity and that now was the time to act.
“We don’t have a lot of seed collections of these species. For some particular species we don’t have any collections in our seedbank,” Dr Emery explained.
“We really want to be able to make seed collections, bring them back to the Australian PlantBank at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney where we have the NSW Seedbank … so we can preserve these seeds for as long as possible, which is an insurance against plant extinction in the wild.
“It’s been good so far … some species are starting to produce mature seed … some seeds are still a little green.
“We’re still able to make a lot of important voucher specimens for the herbarium and notes on species that are still a little green.
“We can then plan to come back and collect when those seeds are more mature.”
