Why are gardeners eternally attracted to novelty? You’d think Australians, who possess one of the world’s biggest flora (over 20,000 species and counting), would be content with what grows locally and has adapted to our challenging climate, yet exotics far outnumber native plants in most of our gardens.
We’re hardly alone. More than 3500 years ago Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt sent off to the Land of Punt (modern Somalia) for Incense Trees (Comniphora myrrha), the first successful plant hunting expedition on record. Her new acquisitions transplanted readily and survived for centuries.
The temperate climate of the British Isles is favourable to a huge range of plants and British gardens are widely celebrated for their extensive use of exotics, from huge trees to tiny alpine plants and bulbs.
Most of these were introduced from the mid sixteenth century on, when the Ottoman Empire spread almost to the gates of Vienna and brought us among other flowers our first tulips.
From the early seventeenth century, as North America was explored and colonised, numerous exciting new plants were introduced to Britain. Swamp Cypress (Taxodium), Tulip Tree (Liriodendron) and the homely flowering perennial, Moses-in-the-Bullrushes (Tradescantia virginiana) date from this period.
From Spain’s South American Empire came marigolds and sunflowers, as well as plants of economic importance like tobacco, potatoes and tomatoes. By the end of the 18th century plant hunters had penetrated to America’s West Coast and discovered magnificent new conifers, shrubs and woodland plants.
Meanwhile Sir Joseph Banks had named his landfall in Australia Botany Bay (saying it all about our flora) and introductions from New Zealand and South Africa soon followed. By the early 19th century botanist J. C. Loudon calculated that 13,140 plants were cultivated in Britain, of which a mere 1,400 were natives.
From around the 1840s the vast flora of China and Japan began arriving in the west, including rhododendrons and camellias. One of my favourites is Scotsman George Forrest (1873-1932) an early collector in China’s south west. He came to plant hunting by accident and you have to admire him for his obsessive enthusiasm for his profession thereafter.
Heads Up: Join Fiona for her illustrated talk on Plant hunters and the Plants that made our Gardens at Orange and Districts ADFAS (www.adfas.org.au/), Orange Conservatorium, 73A Hill Street, Orange, 2800. Refreshments 6pm, talk 6.30pm, guests welcome ($25), details Nerralie Boulton, 0417 062 239.
