President’s Report – 1982

Dr Brian Morley, President

History of founding

The Australian Flora Foundation was launched on August 14, 1981, at a meeting held at Sydney University. The Honourable Neville Wran delivered a short supporting address entitled “The Government, The People and the Foundation”, which was followed by an address by Dr Lloyd Evans, President of the Australian Academy of Sciences. His address was entitled “The Australian Flora Foundation – The Challenge Ahead”.  The President, Dr Brian Morley, responded briefly to these addresses, was presented with a donation of $1,000 by the Society for Growing Australian Plants, and then drinks were served. After the break, an informal meeting of members of the Foundation was held and the executive of the Foundation was ratified. The Council comprised Dr Morley as President, Mr Roger Good (Vice President), Mr Bill Payne (Vice President), Mr Graham Quint (Treasurer) with Councillors Dr L.A.S. Johnson, Dr R.W. Boden, Professor M. Mullins, Dr J. Clemens, Dr L. Smith, Miss Valerie Swane, Mr B. Guilfoyle, Mr J. Armstrong, Mr J. Wrigley and Dr. Richard Williams.

The Foundation has been set up with the objective of fostering research into the biology and cultivation of the Australian flora. For more than 200 years now, explorers and naturalists have collected Australian plants, taxonomists have described and named them, artists illustrated them, and applied use of the flora has started to take place by foresters and horticulturists. But there is still very much to learn about the Australian flora and it is the intention of the Foundation to assist the process of learning about the flora.

Basically, the way the Foundation will operate is by having a group of people known as members who can suggest and vote on what sorts of research projects should be undertaken. The research projects will be vetted by a research committee which is accredited by CSIRO and this accreditation will enable the Foundation to have tax deductibility operating on any donations made by the public. Donations will be solicited from industry such as the nursery trade, private organisations involved in the development of the Australian flora, particularly in the cut-flower trade area, and by any other interested parties such as philanthropic members of the public.

Why is it necessary for the Foundation to involve itself in the financial aspects of enabling people to conduct research? Why is it not possible for universities, for horticultural institutions for the nursery trade to conduct their own research? The reality of the situation is that there is research taking place in universities for example, and very valuable work too, but much of the information which results from this research simply lies idle and is not being used in an applied way to the benefit of the community. In the nursery trade, there are commercial pressures which do not permit those nurserymen who may have an interest in improving or developing certain Australian plants for ornamental use, to have adequate time or permit them to have adequate resources to engage in plant breeding programmes. As regards horticultural institutions, these tend to be more fully occupied in teaching the young and there is a relative lack of the technical expertise required for the improvement of native plants. So it is necessary for some organisation to help coordinate the activities of universities, of horticultural institutions, of the nursery trade, of botanic gardens under one ‘umbrella’ so that a particular direction can emerge and concerted effort be put into the study. There is a certain amount of urgency associated with the acquisition of knowledge about the Australian flora because there are species which are presently threatened by development, either agricultural or otherwise; there are a number of endangered species in the country.

It is important for us to assess the value and significance of endangered species such as these, not only for their own intrinsic value, but also in terms of the international commitment we have towards conserving the world flora. There is a sense of urgency, then, in terms of conservation, but there is also commercial urgency because we only have to look at countries such as South Africa, Israel and California, where quite significant cut-flower industries have developed in recent years involving Australian plants. Banksia, Chamaelaucium and Anigozanthos are being grown in field conditions as crops and are yielding quite significant profit to those individuals who have had the foresight and the vision to develop these plants for use in the cut-flower trade in Western Europe, Japan and similar markets in North America. We have done a considerable amount of work in Australia, particularly in Western Australia, but there is a need for a more collective co-ordinated approach to be made to projects relating to the use of Australian native flora for cut-flowers. The President of the Australian Nurserymen’s Association has stated that in 1977-78 the total net plant sales in Australia was worth $110 million, and that for 1980-81 a conservative estimate is $200 million. These figures relate to the total nursery trade, not simply cut-flowers.

We have left the ephemeral annual species of the Australlan flora, which appear after the rains, virtually unexamined and it is more than certain there are very useful annual ornamental plants which could be grown from this very rich source. One has only to think of the way in which certain South African and certain western North American annuals are grown in gardens all over the world. But if we introduce such Australian annuals into commerce, it must not be at the expense of wild populations; field-crop bulking of seed in cultivation will have to take place to provide a commercial source of seed.

What other sorts of research projects can be considered by the Foundation? One important aspect of the improvement of native plants is that once a cultivar has been perfected, there are presently no trial grounds in which these cultivars can be grown-on to see how they ‘do’, and of course the size of Australia makes it necessary for trial grounds to exist in various different States, and also ideally, for the trial grounds to be duplicated in different climatic areas within the States. Setting up such trial grounds could be one of the sorts of projects with which the Foundation involves itself.

There are a number of native plants which are difficult to propagate using normal methods, and with the advance of techniques such as tissue culture, it is more possible for us to devise methods of vegetative propagation of these difficult plants in a way which was not open to our forebears.

Another aspect of the cultivation of native plants relates to their germination. We know very little about the percentage germination of seed of particular species under various temperature and water regimes. We know even less about seedling morphology, how the seedling develops, and how the ways in which it develops may assist our applied use of that particular species. We know very little about how long it takes a seedling to become established from germination.

Nor do we know a great deal about the cultivation and ecological requirements of Australian native species from subtropical and tropical areas of the country, in New South Wales, Queensland, the Northern Territory. We do not know how these sorts of plants might be acclimatised in more temperate parts of the country, in Victoria, in South Australia and parts of Western Australia. It is very necessary, then, for these plants to be introduced and acclimatisation trials carried out to see how they ‘do’ in a park or street setting; we are over dependent on the use of exotic plants as street trees and park trees in urban areas. We could use broadleaf native plants for situations in which we presently choose exotic plants.

Another type of research that could perhaps be examined relates to brush-fencing. Brush-fencing is a common type of fencing in South Australia. and very often admired by people from interstate. But would it not be appropriate, some might ask, to actually crop the Melaleuca uncinata from which brush is collected in the wild? Would it not be appropriate to crop this plant in coppice fashion so that a renewable source of brush for brush-fencing could be generated on a commercial basis? One thinks also of the work done on the use of eucalypts as dye plants for dyeing wools, some very fine work having been done by the dyers and spinners associations. It might well be worthwhile for the larger dyeing firms to look at this renewable organic source of dye from leaves and for reintroducing the use of vegetable dyes with their subtle tints, moving away from the oil-based aniline dyes of the trade.

There are a number of other types of research activity which have been suggested and these include more straightforward botanical or biosystematic research on ornamental native genera at present little known. There is the suggestion that it might be appropriate for a purely anatomical survey to be undertaken of endemic families and genera in Australia. This would not have immediate and direct applied results, but the Foundation is not concerned entirely with the applied use of the Australian flora. It should also give attention to the acquisition of pure knowledge and an anatomical survey of endemic families and genera, perhaps families and genera which might be threatened. would be a very useful source of basic botanical information.

There is a need for more breeding programmes utilising native plant groups. Some attention might be given to the introduction of perennism from certain forms of Helichrysum bracteatum into the more colourful annual forms of that species. Of course, work on native species involves quite costly travel and data collection in the field, expenses which need to be built into the budget of any well planned research project.

There are very many native monocotyledonous decorative plants which could be collected and assessed for their ornamental value, bulked up into commercial quantities, and retailed by certain specified growers. around the country. The assessment of the conservation status of ornamental species and also the assessment of acceptable levels of exploitation of wild populations of native species are necessary to determine just how much exploitation a particular population can tolerate.

Organisation

There are many research projects which could be proposed and will be proposed, but the most important thing at this stage is to get the infrastructure of the Foundation on a good basis. It would be wrong for people to think that the Foundation was an organisation run from the eastern States simply by looking at the composition of the Council and the executive of the Foundation. The fact that most Council members and most of the executive are from the eastern States is simply a reflection of the fact that those who first floated the idea of the, Foundation lived in the eastern States. In getting such an organisation going it was necessary to have people in close contact with one another; it is in this way that the first Council and executive tends to be oriented towards the eastern States. All Councillors are well aware that to be a success the Foundation must be broad-based and must have national representation and I a am sure that we shall see this happen in the near future. We need to obtain the support of gardeners, the support from members of the Society for Growing Australian Plants, the support of the nursery trade, and indeed the goodwill and backing of all those people who are interested in promoting the Australian flora in one way or another. By becoming members of the Foundation, it will enable people to keep in close touch with the development of the Foundation and it will enable them to actually participate in shaping the Foundation. By making donations to the Foundation, donations which we hope will be tax deductible, a fund of money can be acquired from which research can be financed in the future. The administrative costs of running the Foundation will not come from donations to the Foundation. We hope that administrative costs can be taken solely from membership fees.

In summary then

the Foundation will have interest for those in the nursery trade and the cut-flower industry. It will have interest for those who are involved in the development of new cultivars of native flowers. It will interest people committed to the conservation of our native flora because the activities of the Foundation will help foster good management of our flora. The Foundation will, to a certain extent, operate through the botanic gardens system in Australia and most importantly, the Foundation will have a close link with Universities, Colleges of Advanced Education, and Government Departments throughout the nation such as Forestry and Agriculture. The Foundation will be as useful and influential as the community wishes, it is an organisation which belongs to us all. It is for these broad-based reasons that the present. members of the Foundation are so very optimistic of its future success.Enquiries about membership and donations should be sent to the Treasurer, Mr G. Quint, Australian Flora Foundation.