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Talk: Gondwanan Plants of the Sydney Region

waratahRegistration recommended but not essential

7:30 pm, 2 August, St Andrews Uniting Church, corner of Vernon Street and Chisholm Street, Turramurra

Our speaker, Dr Peter Weston is Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

A large number of plant taxa are shared by New Zealand, southern South America, and south eastern Australia (including Tasmania) but are found nowhere else. Joseph Hooker was so impressed by this pattern that in 1853 he wrote in his Introductory Essay to the Flora Novae-Zelandiae:

… many of the peculiarities of each of the three great areas of land in the southern latitudes are representative ones, effecting a botanical relationship as strong as that which prevails throughout the lands within the Arctic and Northern hemisphere zones, and which is not to be accounted for by any theory of transport or variation, but which is agreeable to the hypothesis of all being members of a once more extensive flora, which has been broken up by geological and climatic causes.

His friends and colleagues soon disagreed. In 1859, Charles Darwin in his Origin of Species cited Hooker’s austral floristic pattern but not his geological speculations, explaining the pattern primarily as the result of repeated, independent episodes of long-distance dispersal across the Southern Ocean.

These pioneering biogeographers spawned different, competing research traditions that remain alive and distinguishable today. 'Hookerian' biogeographers now appeal to the fragmentation of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana to explain vicariant patterns across the southern hemisphere.

Peter's presentation will look at 'Gondwanan' plant groups represented in the Sydney region and consider lines of evidence available to us now that allow us to adjudicate between 'Hookerian' and 'Darwinian' biogeographic explanations.

Event Properties

Event Date 02-08-2022 7:30 pm
Location St Andrews, cnr Vernon St and Chisholm St, Turramurra

We are no longer accepting registration for this event