marcycad

Unido: 28.jun.2022 Última actividad: 26.mar.2024 iNaturalist

My background profession is in healthcare and emergency medicine, however since childhood I have had a life-long interest in natural history and am an amateur botanist, horticulturalist and a keen naturalist having particular passionate interests in Australian botany, unusual and architectural life forms.
Australia has always been a unique place of inspiration for me in terms of its geographical isolation and history of the flora and fauna, in particular two of Australia's most iconic plants, the Australian Grass-trees, namely Kingia and Xanthorrhoea.
Xanthorrhoea in particular is a complex genus of plants we are still learning much about, and differentiating one species from another can be difficult, misidentifications within this taxa are not uncommon, even amongst botanists and experienced nurserymen, and examples can be found in various examples of literature, on the internet and even in botanical gardens, and in many instances plant labels on nursery offered grass-trees are incorrectly recognised specimens available for commercial sale. There also seems to be much mystery about the grass-tree, which has probably led to the various myths and misleading information that surrounds these Australian icons.
The grass-tree seem to have been pretty much underrepresented for so long now in terms of the accessible available literature and much information on these charismatic plants largely appears to be scattered in research papers and in generic botanical literature, my aim is to address this.
I have spent the past 25+ years studying and furthering my experience in understanding these unique plants, honing my knowledge, propagating and growing, and identifying each species, the end result of all this will be to incorporate all the information I have of the current known species into a single encyclopaedic reference guide. Among the contents will include distribution maps and morphological characteristics of how to identify species, anthropogenic ethnobotany, plant and animal associations, cultivation, threats and conservation and a full species list… This is an on-going long-term project of which remains work in progress, the results of which will eventually take the form of a publication.

I will do my best to help identify many of the grass-tree photographs submitted to iNaturalist, however because of the nature of these plants, interpreting some taxa can prove extremely difficult, misidentifications are not uncommon, even amongst botanists and experienced nurserymen, and illustrations can be found in various examples of literature, on the internet and even in some botanical gardens, and I too make mistakes. Some observations I do revisit and review, altering my initial identification with rationale behind my decision but not every observation can be identified with absolute certainty and will remain at genus level.
Your submissions to iNaturalist are an extremely useful tool with which is helping to map the distribution of each species, expanding the current knowledge, particularly with in-the-field identification and assists me in understanding the iconic Australian grass-trees.

Photographs of Grass-tree specimens taken in the America's, submitted as Xanthorrhoea, are usually examples of, the very similar-looking, Mexican Grass-trees within the genus Dasyirion (D. longissimum, D. longistylum or D. quadrangulatum). Whilst there are many exported Xanthorrhoea specimens in cultivation in North American, be cautious with determining the ID.

The photograph includes Xanthorrhoea drummondii, WA.

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