Microseris scapigera

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Microseris scapigera
Murnong plant2.png
Scientific classification Red Pencil Icon.png
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Asterales
Family: Asteraceae
Genus: Microseris
Species:
M. scapigera
Binomial name
Microseris scapigera
Synonyms [1]
  • Leontodon lactucoidesBanks & Sol. ex Hook.f. nom. inval.
  • Microseris forsteriHook.f. nom. illeg.
  • Microseris latifoliaGand.
  • Microseris obtusifoliaGand.
  • Microseris tenuiculaGand.
  • Scorzonella scapigera(A.Cunn.) Greene
  • Scorzonera lawrenciiHook.f.
  • Scorzonera scapigeraG.Forst. nom. inval., nom.nud.
  • Scorzonera scapigeraSol. ex A.Cunn.

Microseris scapigera is a yellow-flowered daisy, a perennial herb, found in New Zealand and Australia. [2] [3] It is the only New Zealand species of Microseris, and one of three Australian species along with Microseris lanceolata and Microseris walteri . It is classified in a group of plants, the tribe Cichorieae, that includes chicory and dandelion.

Contents

The murnong or "yam daisy" has been referred to M. scapigera, M. lanceolata, or M. forsteri, but is now classified as M. walteri.

Now rare and vulnerable due to loss of habitat. [4]

Taxonomy and nomenclature

Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander collected specimens of the plant in New Zealand in 1769 or 1770, but Solander's manuscripts were never published. The locality of their collection is stated by later authors as either the Bay of Islands or Queen Charlotte Sound (Totara nui). Georg Forster (1786) listed the name "Scorzonera scapigera S." in an appendix without description. [5] Allan Cunningham gave a brief description in 1839, mentioning Solander's manuscripts and Banks' specimens plus another specimen collected by his brother Richard. [6]

Joseph Dalton Hooker [7] thought that the species didn't belong well in Scorzonera: he had proposed a subgenus, then placed it in Microseris, beside M. pygmæa of Chile. [8] He gave the name as Microceris Forsteri in 1852, [9] however Cunningham's description with the epithet scapigera takes precedence. Carl Heinrich Schultz 'Bipontinus' published the combination Microseris scapigera in 1866, listing Hooker's M. forsteri and Forster's S. scapigera as synonyms. [10] Neither Hooker nor Schultz referenced Cunningham's description; in 2015 Sneddon designated a lectotype for Schultz' name. [11]

Some authorities have grouped M. scapigera with the other Australian forms into single species under the name M. lancifolia, for example A census of the vascular plants of Victoria, Edition 3. (1990) and Australian Plant Census (2011). [12] Sneddon (2015), in Flora of Australia maintained two separate species, and the Melbourne Herbarium has supported both plus a third unnamed species since the early 1990s. [12] The third species was formally described by Neville Walsh in 2016, matching herbarium specimens were identified, and the name M. walteri was selected. [12]

Conversely, M. scapigera has earlier been "misapplied to" M. lanceolata in the Flora of South Australia (1st and 2nd editions, 1929 and 1957) and The Student's Flora of Tasmania (1963). [13]

Botanical naming

For more than 30 years Murnong was named as Microseris sp. or Microseris lanceolata or Microseris scapigera. Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria botanist Neville Walsh clarified the botanical name of Microseris walteri in 2016 and defined the differences in the three species in the table below. [14]

Feature M. walteri M. lanceolata M. scapigera
Rootssingle fleshy root expanding to a solitary, napiform to narrow-ellipsoid or narrow-ovoid, annually replaced tuberseveral fleshy roots, cylindrical to long-tapered, branching just below ground-levelseveral cylindrical or long-tapered, usually branched shortly below leaves
Fruit (Capsela)usually less than 7mm longusually less than 7mm longmostly 7–10 mm long
Pappus bristlesc. 10 mm long, 0.5–1.3mm wide at base10–20 mm long, c. 0.3–0.5 mm wide at base30–66 mm long
Joined petals (Ligule)usually more than 15mm longusually more than 15mm longup to 12mm long
Originlowlands of temperate southern WA, SA, NSW, ACT, Victoria and Tasmaniararely on basalt soils; alpine and subalpine NSW, ACT and Victoriamostly from basalt plains of western Victoria and elevated sites in Tasmania
Taste of rootssweet-tasting, both raw and cookedbitter, slightly fibrous and not particularly palatableslightly fibrous, and slightly, but tolerably bitter

Uses

Plants of Microseris scapigera sensu have no tubers, but roots that are "fleshy, only slightly fibrous, and slightly, but tolerably bitter when eaten raw". [12] Indigenous Australians may have eaten this plant also, but historical sources describe murnong as a sweet tuber. The bitterness in Microseris scapigera roots can be removed by blanching the roots in boiling water for 5 minutes, before consumption or further cooking.

Aboriginal populations in southeastern Australia relied on tubers of the daisy yam as a staple, [15] and actively cultivated it. [16] It is known as ngampa in the Thura-Yura languages. [17]

Related Research Articles

<i>Banksia</i> Genus of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae

Banksia is a genus of around 170 species in the plant family Proteaceae. These Australian wildflowers and popular garden plants are easily recognised by their characteristic flower spikes, and fruiting "cones" and heads. Banksias range in size from prostrate woody shrubs to trees up to 30 metres tall. They are found in a wide variety of landscapes: sclerophyll forest, (occasionally) rainforest, shrubland, and some more arid landscapes, though not in Australia's deserts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Root vegetable</span> Plant root used as a vegetable

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<i>Picris</i> Genus of flowering plants

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<i>Ripogonum</i> Genus of flowering plants

Ripogonum is a genus of flowering plants confined to eastern Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea. Until recently this genus was included in the family Smilacaceae, and earlier in the family Liliaceae, but it has now been separated as its own family Ripogonaceae.

<i>Banksia robur</i> Species of shrub in the family Proteaceae from the east coast of Australia

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<i>Microseris lanceolata</i> Species of plant

Microseris lanceolata is an Australian alpine herb with yellow flowers and one of three plants known as murnong or yam daisy along with Microseris scapigera and Microseris walteri.

<i>Banksia solandri</i> Species of shrub in the family Proteaceae from southwest Western Australia.

Banksia solandri, commonly known as Stirling Range banksia, is a species of large shrub in the plant genus Banksia. It occurs only within the Stirling Range in southwest Western Australia. Its scientific name honours the botanist Daniel Solander, one of the first collectors of Banksia.

The murnong or yam daisy is any of the plants Microseris walteri, Microseris lanceolata and Microseris scapigera, which are an important food source for many Aboriginal peoples in southern parts of Australia. Murnong is a Woiwurrung word for the plant, used by the Wurundjeri people and possibly other clans of the Kulin nation. They are called by a variety of names in the many different Aboriginal Australian languages, and occur in many oral traditions as part of Dreamtime stories.

<i>Microseris</i> Genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Herbarium of Victoria</span> Australian herbaria and scientific institution in Victoria

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<i>Calotis</i> Genus of flowering plants

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<i>Olearia ramulosa</i> Species of flowering plant

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<i>Flora Antarctica</i> Scientific work by Joseph Dalton Hooker

The Flora Antarctica, or formally and correctly The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, is a description of the many plants discovered on the Ross expedition, which visited islands off the coast of the Antarctic continent, with a summary of the expedition itself, written by the British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker and published in parts between 1844 and 1859 by Reeve Brothers in London. Hooker sailed on HMS Erebus as assistant surgeon.

The Flora Novae-Zelandiae is a description of the plants discovered in New Zealand during the Ross expedition written by Joseph Dalton Hooker and published by Reeve Brothers in London between 1853 and 1855. Hooker sailed on HMS Erebus as assistant surgeon. It was the third in a series of four Floras in the Flora Antarctica, the others being the Botany of Lord Auckland's Group and Campbell's Island (1843–45), the Botany of Fuegia, the Falklands, Kerguelen's Land, Etc. (1845–1847), and the Flora Tasmaniae (1853–1859). They were "splendidly" illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch.

<i>Olearia decurrens</i> Species of shrub

Olearia decurrens, commonly known as the clammy daisy bush, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to arid, inland Australia. It is a glabrous, sticky, twiggy shrub with narrow egg-shaped to linear leaves sometimes with toothed edges, and white and yellow, daisy-like inflorescences.

<i>Pterostylis foliata</i> Species of orchid

Pterostylis foliata, commonly known as the slender greenhood, is a species of orchid widespread in south-eastern Australia and New Zealand. Flowering plants have a rosette of three to six, dark green, crinkled leaves crowded around the flowering stem and a single dark green and brown flower with a deep V-shaped sinus between the lateral sepals.

<i>Olearia pannosa</i> Species of plant

Olearia pannosa, commonly known as silver-leaved daisy or velvet daisy-bush, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to south-eastern continental Australia. It is a spreading undershrub or shrub with egg-shaped or heart-shaped leaves, and white and yellow daisy flowers.

<i>Microseris walteri</i> Species of plant

Microseris walteri is an Australian perennial herb with yellow flowers and edible tuberous roots, and one of three plants known as murnong or yam daisy along with Microseris scapigera and Microseris lanceolata.

<i>Myosotis albiflora</i> Species of flowering plant

Myosotis albiflora is a species of flowering plant in the family Boraginaceae, native to southern Chile and Argentina. This species was described by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander in Joseph Dalton Hooker's 19th century work Flora Antarctica. Plants of this species of forget-me-not are perennial and have white corollas. It is one of two native species of Myosotis in southern South America, the other being M. antarctica.

References

  1. The Plant List: A Working List of All Plant Species , retrieved 1 July 2016
  2. Flora Committee (2010). Breitwieser, I.; Brownsey, P.; Ford, K.; Glenny, D.; Heenan, P.; Wilton, A. (eds.). "Microseris scapigera (Sol. ex A.Cunn.) Sch.Bip". Flora of New Zealand. Online Edition. Accessed at www.nzflora.info. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
  3. Lunt, Ian (January 2016). "A Transient Soil Seed Bank for the Yam-daisy Microseris scapigera.". The Victorian Naturalist. 113 (1): 16–19. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
  4. "Flora of Victoria". vicflora.rbg.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  5. Forster, Georg (1786). Florulae Insularum Australium Prodromus (in Latin). Göttingen: Joann. Christian Dietrich. p. 91. Species 534.
  6. Cunningham, Allan (1839). "Florae insularum Novae Zelandiae precursor". Annals of Natural History. 2 (8): 125. doi:10.1080/00222933809512347. 1. SCORZONERA, L. DC. / 430. S. ? scapigera (Sol. MSS.) foliis lanceolatis retrorso-dentatis integerrimisve, caulibus gracilibus, scapo unifloro. Forst. Prodr. n. 534, absque descipt. / New Zealand (Northern Island). — 1769, Sir Jos. Banks. Among fern, on the hills, Bay of Islands. — 1834, R. Cunningham . / Anne vere species hujus generis ?
  7. Known as "Hooker filius" to distinguish him from his father, and abbreviated as "Hook. fil." or "Hook.f.".
  8. Raoul had applied the name of Chilean Microseris pygmæa (Hook. et Arn.) DC to a New Zealand species, presumably this one. (Raoul Choix des Plantes, p. 45; de Candolle Prodromus pp. 88–89; Hooker & Arnott "Contrib. Flora S.Am. – Compositæ" Comp. Bot. Mag. v. 1 p. 30.)
  9. Hooker, Joseph Dalton (1852). The botany of the Antarctic voyage of H.M. discovery ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839-1843: under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross. II. Flora Novae-Zelandiae. London: Reeve Brothers. pp. 150–151. In the ' London Journal of Botany' I proposed making this plant a subgenus of Scorzonera, to which it had been referred, having failed to reduce it to any genus of this difficult tribe described in De Candolle ; it is, however, truly congeneric with the Microseris of Chili, as rightly determined by M. Raoul, but the species is quite a different one.
  10. Schultz, C. H. 'Bipontinus' (1866). "Beitrag zum Systeme der Cichoriaceen" [Contribution to the systematics of the Cichoriaceae]. Jahresbericht der Pollichia (in German and Latin). 22–24: 296–322.Microseris longifolia and M. scapigera are listed on page 310 in Latin.
  11. APNI citation 5371511 "Nova Zelandia [New Zealand]. near Totara nui [Queen Charlotte Sound], 1769, Banks and Solander; lecto: (here chosen): BM; isolecto: WELT."
  12. 1 2 3 4 Walsh, Neville (2016). "A name for Murnong (Microseris: Asteraceae: Cichorioideae)" (PDF). Muelleria. 34: 63–67. doi:10.5962/p.292268. S2CID   251001015 . Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  13. "Name 73429 (Microseris scapigera)". Australian Plant Names Index. Retrieved 5 October 2020.
  14. Walsh, Neville (2016). "A name for Murnong (Microseris: Asteraceae: Cichorioideae)" (PDF). Muelleria. 34.
  15. Beth Gott, ‘Murnong — Microseris scapigera: a study of a staple food of Victorian Aborigines’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 2, 1983, pp. 12, 14.
  16. Pascoe, Bruce (2018), Dark Emu : aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture, Magabala Books, ISBN   978-1-925768-95-4
  17. Simpson, Jane and Luise Hercus. 2004. Thura-Yura as a Subgroup. In Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.), Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, 179-206, 580-645. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.