Thursday Talks

Thursdays, 12:30pm in the Australian National Botanic Gardens Theatrette

A fascinating series of talks about Australian plants, plants of the world and special topics related to plants.
Presented by the Friends of the Australian National Botanic Gardens

Entry by gold coin donation to the Friends of the Gardens.
All donations support Australian National Botanic Gardens' programs and development.

Come Into the Garden

2 February | Mark Carmody

Mark Carmody has spent many years gardening in Canberra at ACT Parks and Conservation, the National Rose Gardens and as head gardener at The Lodge. Since 2007, Mark has been the ABC weather presenter in Canberra, imparting a gardening flavour to the nightly news. Mark will launch the 2012 program by talking about his favourite plants, both native and exotic, that are suitable for Canberra gardens.

Sir Joseph Banks, botanical collector and public man of science

9 February | Don Beer

Learn about Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist who took part in Captain Cook's first voyage to Australia. HIstorian, Don Beer, will tell about the man as a person and botanist and present some modern views of his historical importance.

Fungal Pathogens: threats to Australian bush and gardens, with special reference to guava rust (Puccinia psidii)

16 February | Ken Old

Fungal pathogens: threats to Australian bush and gardens, with special reference to guava rust (Puccinia psidii)

Ken Old, who retired from CSIRO Forestry in 2003, will speak about the new threat from Puccinia psidii, Myrtle Rust, a pathogen indigenous to South America which attacks leaves, shoots and fruits of Myrtaceae. First noticed on the mid-north coast of NSW, it has spread to Queensland and Ulladulla, and may extend its range into native plant communities throughout eastern Australia.

Future of Alpine offspring

23 February | Dr Adrienne Nicotra and Dr Gemma Hoyle

The Australian alpine flora is critically vulnerable to climate change; some species may become extinct. How will climate change affect its reproductive biology and demography and would our national alpine biodiversity be conserved? Drs Nicotra and Hoyle, from ANU’s Research School of Biology, are key members of the team that is doing research on Australian Alpine seed ecology in collaboration with the ANBG, the University of Queensland and the Friends.

Changes in bird occupancy with habitat change in ACT woodlands

1 March | Nicki Taws

Hear about a recent study exploring long-term trends in birds and changes in habitat in woodlands of the ACT.

Ms Taws has been involved with the Canberra Ornithologists Group for nearly 20 years, and has assisted with the Woodland Bird Monitoring project since it began in 1995.

Desert leaves; when being small and thick keeps you out of trouble

7 March | Dr Andrea Leigh

Find out how the size, structure and thickness of leaves of desert plants help them avoid leaf temperature stress.

Calling in the Face of Danger: parent/offspring communication under the risk of predation

15 March | Tonya Haff

Recent research using white-browed scrub wrens as the model has shown that the young are not quite so helpless as previously believed, and that parents show a surprising nuance in their ability to assess and reduce risk to their chicks. Ms Haff has undertaken this research as a PhD student at ANU’s Research School of Biology.

Trees and Arboreta: History & Science

22 March | Max Bourke

Learn how to collect new tree species, preserve and study them using methods from the 19th century

Landscape Architecture: The Australian National Botanic Gardens Philosophy

29 March | Kaiya Browning

Be inspired by our Australian National Botanic Gardens Landscape Architect and capture ideas for using Australian native plants in your garden.

Wildflowers and vegetation of Kamchatka, Far East Russia

5 April | Rosemary Purdie

Rosemary Purdie is a plant ecologist who cut her botanical teeth doing vegetation mapping in western Queensland in the 1970s, has never been able to walk past plants since without checking them out, and has done extensive plant collecting in all Australian states and territories. A decade ago she exchanged a career with the Commonwealth Government for voluntary work in, for example, the Australian National Herbarium, plus regular trips to Central Asia where she continues to be enthralled by the cultures, landscapes and vegetation. Rosemary recently visited Kamchatka, known as Russia's land of ice and fire: ice because of its long, extreme winters, and fire because of the many volcanoes. These elements contribute to a varied and beautiful floral display over spring and summer. Rosemary will introduce lowland forest, tundra, lava flow and alpine vegetation and plants she saw, and show a colourful relationship between some local plants and brown bears!

Pollen – nothing to sneeze at

12 April | Andrew Thornhill

To most people pollen is a yellow dust that causes hay fever; but if you look a little closer, pollen comes in a multitude of shapes and sizes. Andrew will present pollen images belonging to Australian plants and describe the many ways that pollen can be used in scientific research.

Andrew Thornhill is currently a research scientist at the Centre For Australian National Biodiversity Research aka Australian National Herbarium aka CSIRO working on the phylogenetics of Acacia, Mosses, Liverworts and Hornworts. His PhD project at ANU was on the pollen morphology of the Myrtaceae family; he investigated whether there was variable pollen morphology within the family, and whether this could be linked to a phylogenetic tree of the family. He also researched Myrtaceae fossil pollen, some of which was up to 60 million years old, and determined when the main pollen groups within the family first appeared. While doing his PhD Andrew also helped compile the Australasian Pollen and Spores Atlas, based at ANU, and took many of the images that can viewed on the web.

A short walk in the Pyrenees

19 April | Kim Pullen

Kim Pullen is CSIRO Entomology’s Insect Identification Officer and a member of Friends of Grasslands.
With his wife Kim recently visited the Valle d’Aran in the Pyrenees where they undertook some long walks through alpine meadows and lush forests. Kim will talk about this part of Spain, close to the French border, and share some pictures of the rich alpine flora and stunning scenery.

Glimpses into the world of Australian moths

26 April | Ted Edwards

Learn about the biology of moths, which are often thought of as the ugly cousins of butterflies; however, their colours can be just as remarkable and, with over 20,000 species in Australia, their biology and lifestyles are often far more diverse.

Ted Edwards is a Lepidopterist and currently an Honorary Fellow with CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences and the Australian National Insect collection. Ted is a co-author, along with Paul Zborowski, of A Guide to Australian Moths, published in 2007.

Are Emigrant Australian Trees Invasive Aliens?

3 May | Dr Trevor Booth

Australian tree species have been widely planted around the world, but some species have proved invasive in particular environments. Trevor will review the introduction of some of the most important plantation species from the Eucalyptus, Acacia and Casuarina genera into countries outside Australia. He will consider the introduction of Melaleuca quinquenervia, which is not a major plantation species, but a problem as an invasive species, as a special case. He will focus on identifying the characteristics that have made some Australian species relatively ineffective as invasive species, while others have become noxious weeds.

Dr Trevor Booth is a Senior Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences in Canberra. He led the Natural Ecosystems Theme in CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship for three years until March 2011, when he returned to his own forestry research. His early work at CSIRO was concerned with developing and applying new bioclimatic analysis methods, particularly to assist the introduction of eucalypt species outside Australia. Trevor has developed methods to predict how well particular tree species will grow in different environments and has led and contributed to major projects in Australia, Asia, Africa and South America. He contributed to the early work (AR2) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His current research is related to species selection, climate change, carbon accounting and biofuels.

Sustaining Canberra's Urban Forest

10 May | Dr Cristopher Brack

The urban forest in which Canberra is now embedded is a globally-unique legacy of those who envisaged, designed and created our city and its form. Lindsay Pryor consolidated and extended what the Griffins and Charles Weston began before him, and created much of the urban forest valued and enjoyed by Canberrans today. In this lecture, possibly supported by Professor Peter Kanowski, Dr Brack will reflect on what we have learnt from the decades of experimentation and innovation that characterised work on the urban forest and how we might approach the challenges and opportunities of sustaining and renewing Canberra's urban and peri-urban forests.

Dr Cristopher Brack is Associate Professor in the Fenner School of Environment and Society, ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment. From 1994-2009 he taught and researched forest measurement and management. His most significant research contributions have been the development of optimal sampling strategies, modelling tools, and decision-support systems for trees and associated biota at stand, landscape and continental scales. This research has broad application in both natural, plantation and urban environments. and has been influential in catalysing the development and adoption of new approaches by forest and land managers and policy makers. He has just returned to Canberra after three years as the inaugural Chair and Professor of Forestry at the Waiariki Institute in Rotorua, New Zealand.

The Scrolls Illuminated

17 May | Dr Fiona Pfennigwerth

The Scrolls Illuminated: A selection from five series of naturalistic watercolour paintings and preparatory sketches of Australian nature by Fiona Pfennigwerth, that are scanned and reproduced as borders in her recently published book The scrolls illuminated: an illuminating presentationof Solomon's Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther fromthe Bible.

Australia is not all eucalypts – living in a native pine forest

24 May | Ann Mont

Find out why eucalypts are not necessarily everywhere in Australia.

Ann spent her childhood living on a farm in a Murray pine (Callitris) forest in the Riverina. Flat land, no streams, no rocks and hardly a eucalypt in sight. How could this be? She studied geography at ANU and on a field trip to this area she realised that social history, geomorphology, and factors such as irrigation and rising salt are interconnected, and these impact on the vegetation. The talk will discuss Ann's observations.

Conserving the Pink-tailed Worm Lizard in the ACT

31 May | Dr Theresa Knopp

Learn about research to protect the Pink-tailed Worm Lizard from urban development in Canberra.

The Pink-tailed Worm Lizard is a small and cryptic legless lizard with a current distribution largely confined to the ACT. With the increasing threats posed by urban development, concerns have been raised about the long term survival of the species, along with an urgent need for a comprehensive management plan. Population genetic methods have been combined with GIS mapping to identify the regionally most important populations and the main barriers and corridors for dispersal in this endemic species. Theresa will explain the methods used and results gained so far.

Warming in the Tasman Sea, a global warming hotspot

7 June | Dr Wenju Cai

Find out what is contributing to warming in the Tasman Sea and the implications.

Oceanographers have identified a series of ocean hotspots around the world generated by strengthening wind systems that have driven oceanic currents, including the East Australian Current, polewards beyond their known boundaries. Motivated by a previous finding of an accelerated warming in the Tasman Sea, the new research looks at changes along other oceanic currents, and finds a synchronised enhanced warming signal, strengthening the argument for a role of greenhouse warming in driving these oceanic hot spots. Other supporting evidence includes a poleward shift of weather systems and expansion of the tropics that affect our rainfall.