Qld: Botanists hail new plant species find
Copyright 2001 AAP NEWSFEED
September 26, 2001
By Janelle Miles
BRISBANE, Sept 26 - A new plant species, being hailed as significant as the discovery of the Wollemi pine, has been found in a threatened rainforest near Kingaroy in Queensland's south-east.
Up to 20 of the plants, with fruit like a tomato, were discovered in the roadside remnant of rainforest about eight months ago but only recently identified as a species never documented before.
Caroline Haskard, founder of the Kingaroy branch of the Society for Growing Australian Plants, today described the find as one that ranked with the discovery of the Wollemi pine, west of Sydney, in 1994.
The Wollemi pine is one of the world's rarest species with only 43 adult trees known in three small stands.
Worldwide Fund for Nature rainforest recovery officer Keryn Hyslop said today the new plant was a member of the Solanaceae family which also included the potato, tomato and eggplant.
"It gets a little lilac flower similar to a tomato and has this really sweet little red fruit which is like a tomato but it's only the size of a pea," Ms Hyslop told AAP.
"It's a little plant that survives in dappled sunlight on the forest floor."
The plant ranges in size from about 25 cm to one metre in height and botanists believe it has probably survived in the dry rainforest of the region for thousands of years.
But after living through the land clearing of the last 200 years, fire and drought, its future is very much on shaky ground.
Ms Hyslop said the two hectare strip of rainforest between Kingaroy and Nanango, where the plants were located, was itself threatened.
The rainforest was donated to the local council by dairy farmer Alan Semgreen about 40 years ago as a public reserve.
But about 20 years ago, an area was cleared by the council to extract gravel and the rainforest strip is now classified as a road reserve.
Ms Hyslop called on both local and state governments to reclassify the area as an environmental reserve to ensure its protection.
The rainforest is also considered an essential habitat for the threatened black-breasted button quail - the only rainforest quail in the world.