Trees and Plant Hunters - Prof. Sir Peter Crane
Professor Sir Peter Crane provided a very interesting lecture focussed on plant hunters that entered the then secret world of Japan to bring to us many of the plants that are now familiar to us. He looked at the exploits of Robert Fortune, John Gould Veitch and Ernest Henry Wilson to name but a few. It also appears that many of the plants that they originally found in Japan (and assumed originated there) had previously been discovered in China.
Sir Peter also described the amazing story of a pine that has been recently discovered in Australia. The Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) has been known from fossil records for many years but has been presumed extinct. However, about 100 specimens were discovered in 1994 only 200km west of Sydney in a rainforest gorge within the 500,000 hectare Wollemi National Park in the Blue Mountains! The discovery was described as the equivalent of “finding a small dinosaur still alive on earth”.
The Royal Botanic Garden, Kew recently planted a specimen as part of a worldwide bid to save the Wollemi Pine from extinction.