South Australia’s 5000th plant

The State Herbar­i­um of South Aus­tralia has lots to cel­e­brate. Not only does 2015 mark its 60^th anniver­sary, but the team has recent­ly recog­nised and named the State’s 5000^th plant.

Ama­teur nat­u­ral­ists Trudie Jaques and Tony Lewis noticed the pleat­ed daisy in Dhil­ba Guu­ran­da-Innes Nation­al Park, col­lect­ing pho­tos and spec­i­mens under a sci­en­tif­ic permit.

From this infor­ma­tion the State Herbar­i­um for­mal­ly iden­ti­fied the plant as occur­ring in the wild in South Aus­tralia and gave it the sci­en­tif­ic name, Podolepis ruga­ta sub­species trullata.

Learn more about this spe­cial discovery

• The new pleat­ed daisy is a sub­species of the genus Podolepis.
• A rare native, the pleat­ed daisy has strik­ing yel­low flowers.
• The new pleat­ed daisy has a lim­it­ed range, seen only in Dhil­ba Guu­ran­da-Innes Nation­al Park, Althor­pe Islands Con­ser­va­tion Park and Bus­by Islet off the north­ern shore of Kan­ga­roo Island.
• Trul­la­ta, from the plant’s sci­en­tif­ic name Podolepis ruga­ta sub­species trul­la­ta, means trow­el shaped and describes the small leafy bracts around the base of the flower.
• The tax­on­o­mist who described the sub­species is Jeff Jeanes from the Nation­al Herbar­i­um of Vic­to­ria, who also revised the dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the Aus­tralia-wide genus of Podolepis.

Estab­lished in late 1954, the State Herbar­i­um pro­vides foun­da­tion­al knowl­edge about what plant species occur in the wild in South Aus­tralia, includ­ing weeds and natives.

Did you know?

• Every year around 50 new records are added to the state’s list of plant species.
• The State Herbar­i­um of South Australia’s col­lec­tion includes more than one mil­lion spec­i­mens val­ued at more than $71 million.
• In real­i­ty many of these spec­i­mens are price­less as their plant species and com­mu­ni­ties no longer exist.
• One of the pri­ma­ry roles of the Herbar­i­um is to dis­cov­er, study, describe and iden­ti­fy plant species so they can be for­mal­ly recog­nised and con­sis­tent­ly identified.
• The Herbar­i­um is also respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing the col­lec­tion of all of South Australia’s known species of plants, fun­gi, moss­es, lichens, algae and seaweeds.