Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 12.3
Western Austra-
lian Qualup bells (
Pimelea
physodes
) flowering stems.
(Photo courtesy of K. Seaton,
Department of Agriculture
and Food, Western Australia)
Ways to Source Variation in Plants
Plant hunting has been pursued from Europe, North America, Australasia, and Asia
since the fifteenth century sourcing new plant forms for ornamentals, agriculture,
horticulture and medicinal purposes. This has led to the collection of new plants
in botanic gardens around the world particularly throughout Europe. Plant hunting
has also provided new products that compliment diets, such the introduction of tea
(
Camellia sinensis
) sourced from Asia, the Himalayas, Japan and Indonesia. Some
notable early plant collectors were Hans Sloane (1660-1753) from the West In-
dies; James Cunningham (died 1709) to China; Georg Eberhard Rumpf (Rumphius)
(1627-1702) the Moluccas; Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) Newfoundland, Labra-
dor, South America, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, the Malay Archipelago, Hebri-
des, and Iceland; Francis Masson (1741-1805) and Carl Per Thunberg (1743-1828)
to South Africa; David Douglas (1799-1843) to North America and Alexander von
Humboldt (1769-1859) to Spanish America (Janick
2007
; Fry
2009
). The early
botanic gardens were established to propagate and display a wide array of exotic
plant material such as the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew in London where 7 mil-
lion herbarium specimens included the collections of Charles Darwin (1809-1882),
Joseph Hooker (1814-1879), David Livingstone (1813-1873), Ernest Wilson
(1876-1930) and Joseph Berkeley (1803-1889), (Kew
2012
). The Berlin Botanic
Garden at Dahlem is another world class botanic garden with 22,000 living plants
in cultivation (Anon
2010
). An example of a special plant collecting expedition
included those of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), who accompanied James Cook
(1728-1779) from 1668 to 1771 to the southern ocean, in HM Bark
Endeavour
which included Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia where
