Australian National Botanic Gardens | |
---|---|
Type | Botanical garden |
Motto | study and promote Australia's flora |
Location | Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia |
Coordinates | 35°16′44″S149°06′33″E / 35.27889°S 149.10917°E Coordinates: 35°16′44″S149°06′33″E / 35.27889°S 149.10917°E |
Area | 90 hectares (220 acres) |
Established | September 1949 by Ben Chifley and Sir Edward Salisbury |
Designer | Lindsay Pryor, Superintendent of Parks and Gardens in the Australian Capital Territory |
Owned by | Commonwealth of Australia |
Operated by | Director of National Parks |
Visitors | 450,480(in 2010–11) [1] |
Website | anbg |
Official name | Australian National Botanic Gardens (part), Clunies Ross St, Acton, ACT, Australia |
Type | Listed place |
Criteria | B., C., E., F. |
Designated | 22 June 2004 |
Reference no. | 105345 |
The Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) is a heritage-listed botanical garden located in Acton , Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Established in 1949, the Gardens is administered by the Australian Government's Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. The botanic gardens was added to the Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004. [2]
The botanic gardens is the largest living collection of native Australian flora. [3] The mission of the ANBG is to "study and promote Australia's flora". The gardens maintains a wide variety of botanical resources for researchers and cultivates native plants threatened in the wild. The herbarium code for the Australian National Botanic Gardens is CANB. [4]
When Canberra was being planned in the 1930s, the establishment of the gardens was recommended in a report in 1933 by the Australian Capital Territory Advisory Council. In 1935, The Dickson Report set forth a framework for their development. A large site for the gardens was set aside on Black Mountain. In September 1949, the ceremonial planting of the first trees by Prime Minister Ben Chifley and Sir Edward Salisbury, director of Kew Gardens, took place. Development of the site, facilities and collection progressed and the Gardens were officially opened in October 1970 by Prime Minister John Gorton. [3]
To celebrate the Gardens' 50th anniversary in 2020, a new Banksia garden was added, showcasing a wide selection of the over-170 Banksia species spread across the coasts and hinterland of most of mainland Australia and Tasmania. [5]
The Gardens has tenure over 90 hectares (220 acres) on Black Mountain. Approximately 40 hectares (99 acres) are currently[ when? ] developed as the Botanic Gardens. [3] Plans for the development of the remaining land are on hold until funds are available.[ citation needed ]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(September 2010) |
The gardens is organised in thematic sections; plants are grouped by shared taxonomy or are presented in ecological groupings that exist in nature. More than 5,500 species are cultivated. Displays include:
The area is located on the north-eastern side of Black Mountain and consists of steep to gently sloping hillsides cut by several gullies. The setting is within dry sclerophyll woodland dominated by Eucalyptus rossii , E. mannifera ssp. maculosa and E. macrorhyncha . Soils in the area are predominantly red/yellow[ clarification needed ] earths and red earth/red podsolic[ clarification needed ] soils with associated lithosols and siliceous sands. The Gardens comprise sections devoted to different taxonomic plant groups and ecological themes focussed on Australian native plants. The site is crossed by a network of paths, providing access to the various garden beds. Areas of native bushland are still present on the site. One area on the upper slopes had been developed as a nature trail. Special features within the Gardens include the eucalypt lawn, rockery, rainforest gully, mallee shrubland, Hawkesbury sandstone and the Aboriginal trail. The rainforest area has been developed in what was previously a dry gully and has been planted to represent the eastern coast of Australia: Tasmanian species occupy the lower end of the gully and Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland species in sequence moving up the gully. The proposed conservatory at the upper end will allow the cultivation of tropical species.[ clarification needed ] The Gardens are used as an education centre from primary to tertiary levels including horticultural and taxonomic training. They are also important for scientific research into the taxonomy, horticulture and biology of native plant species. The living collections are particularly important for this function. A large number of rare and endangered plant species are also included in the living collections, thus ensuring the preservation of their genotypes and allowing some protection through cultivation. Due to the mature vegetation and a wide range of habitats present in the area, over 100 native and exotic bird species have been recorded from the Gardens. [2]
The Australian National Herbarium is held on site at the National Botanic Gardens. The Herbarium houses the third largest collection of pressed, dried plant specimens in Australia. [6] The Herbarium is operated jointly with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) as part of a joint research facility, the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research. It is not open to the public. The Australian National Herbarium participates in the Australasian Virtual Herbarium(AVH), an online database of botanical information, including six million specimen records displaying geographic distribution, images, descriptive text and identification tools.
The Gardens manages several large plant databases, including "What's Its Name" (WIN), [7] which is a point of access to the Australian Plant Name Index (APNI) [8] listing all the scientific names ever used for Australia's plants. A large collection of images [9] is also available.
The Gardens' library has significant collections of botanical books, journals, CD-ROMs and maps. The library is open to students and the public by appointment.
Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria are botanic gardens across two sites–Melbourne and Cranbourne.
Alexander Segger George is a Western Australian botanist. He is the authority on the plant genera Banksia and Dryandra. The "bizarre" Restionaceae genus Alexgeorgea was named in his honour in 1976.
The Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan is a 416-hectare (1,030-acre) botanical garden located in a hilly area of the southwestern Sydney suburb of Mount Annan, between Campbelltown and Camden, New South Wales. It is the largest botanical garden in Australia, specializing in native plants, with a collection of over 4000 species. Officially opened in 1988, it was known as Mount Annan Botanic Garden, until 2011.
Banksia nutans, commonly known as nodding banksia, is a species of shrub native to the south coast of Western Australia in the genus Banksia. Growing to a metre (3 ft) tall, it has pale blue-green fine-leaved foliage and unusual purple-brown inflorescences which hang upside down rather than grow upright like most other banksias.
Nancy Tyson Burbidge was an Australian systemic botanist, conservationist and herbarium curator.
The Blatter Herbarium (BLAT), in St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, is a major Herbarium in India. It is listed in the Index Herbariorum, published by the International Association for Plant Taxonomy and New York Botanical Garden. The Herbarium specializes in the vascular plants of western India; algae, mosses, and fungi of Mumbai; seed samples of medicinally and economically important plants of Maharashtra, and wood samples of Maharashtra. The institute holds the largest botanical collection in western India.
Banksia epica is a shrub that grows on the south coast of Western Australia. A spreading bush with wedge-shaped serrated leaves and large creamy-yellow flower spikes, it grows up to 3½ metres (11½ ft) high. It is known only from two isolated populations in the remote southeast of the state, near the western edge of the Great Australian Bight. Both populations occur among coastal heath on cliff-top dunes of siliceous sand.
Lindsay Dixon Pryor AO was an Australian botanist noted for his work on Eucalyptus taxonomy and his role in the landscape design of Canberra, including the foundation of the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
Angophora hispida grows as a mallee, or as a tree to about 7 m (25 ft) in height. A. hispida's small size, especially when compared to its Angophora and Eucalyptus relatives, leads to it being known by the common name dwarf apple. It is native to a relatively small patch of central New South Wales – from just south of Sydney up to the Gosford area. The plant's leaves are sessile (stalk-less) and hug the stem with heart-shaped bases. Its previous name – A. cordifolia – referred to these cordate leaves. Another distinctive feature are the red bristly hairs that cover the branchlets, flower bases and new growth. This leads to the specific epithet hispida.
The National Herbarium of Victoria is one of Australia's earliest herbaria and the oldest scientific institution in Victoria. Its 1.5 million specimens of preserved plants, fungi and algae—collectively known as the State Botanical Collection of Victoria—comprise the largest herbarium collection in Australia and Oceania.
The flora of Australia comprises a vast assemblage of plant species estimated to over 30,000 vascular and 14,000 non-vascular plants, 250,000 species of fungi and over 3,000 lichens. The flora has strong affinities with the flora of Gondwana, and below the family level has a highly endemic angiosperm flora whose diversity was shaped by the effects of continental drift and climate change since the Cretaceous. Prominent features of the Australian flora are adaptations to aridity and fire which include scleromorphy and serotiny. These adaptations are common in species from the large and well-known families Proteaceae (Banksia), Myrtaceae, and Fabaceae.
Cordyline congesta, commonly known as narrow-leaved palm lily is an evergreen Australian plant. A rare shrub up to 3 metres tall found on the margins of rainforest, and in riverine scrub and moist gullies in eucalyptus forest. Growing north from the Clarence River, New South Wales.
William Faris Blakely was an Australian botanist and collector. From 1913 to 1940 he worked in the National Herbarium of New South Wales, working with Joseph Maiden on Eucalyptus, Maiden named a red gum in his honour, Eucalyptus blakelyi. His botanical work centred particularly on Acacias, Loranthaceae and Eucalypts.
Eucalyptus rhodantha, commonly known as rose mallee or rose gum, is a species of straggly mallee or shrub native to western parts of Western Australia. It has smooth bark and a crown composed entirely of circular to heart-shaped juvenile leaves arranged in opposite pairs and attached directly to the stems with no stalks. The flower buds appear singly in the leaf axils and are red, the fruits hemispherical to conical and pendent. The rose mallee is grown as an ornamental shrub suitable for gardens in hot and dry climates. It is found more often in urban gardens and cultivation than in the wild and is readily available in seed form.
Judith Gay West is an Australian scientist currently working as an Executive Director of the Australian National Botanic Gardens. West holds a doctor of philosophy (PhD) by thesis on "A taxonomic revision of Dodonaea (Sapindaceae) in Australia". She completed her PhD in 1981 from the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
The National Herbarium of New South Wales was established in 1853. The Herbarium has a collection of more than 1.4 million plant specimens, making it the second largest collection of pressed, dried plant specimens in Australia, including scientific and historically significant collections and samples of Australian flora gathered by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander during the voyage of HMS Endeavour in 1770.
The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) is an online resource that allows access to plant specimen data held by various Australian and New Zealand herbaria. It is part of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and was formed by the amalgamation of Australia's Virtual Herbarium and NZ Virtual Herbarium. As of 12 August 2014, more than five million specimens of the 8 million and upwards specimens available from participating institutions have been databased.
Patricia Holmgren is an American botanist. Holmgren's main botanical interests are the flora of the U.S. intermountain west and the genera Tiarella and Thlaspi. Holmgren was the director of the herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden from 1981–2000, and editor of Index Herbariorum from 1974–2008.
Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH) is an association of the leaders of herbaria in Australia and New Zealand. It is governed by a constitution. It endorses the taxonomy and nomenclature of the Australian Plant Census, which is the source for accepted names of species and, in particular, for accepted names of Australasian species. It supports the Australian Plant Name Index. CHAH is incorporated in the A.C.T. and is an Australian registered business with ABN 31 496 409 479.
This Wikipedia article was originally based on Australian National Botanic Gardens (part), Clunies Ross St, Acton, ACT, Australia , entry number 105345 in the Australian Heritage Database published by the Commonwealth of Australia 2004 under CC-BY 4.0 licence , accessed on 21 May 2020.