JCU Greenhouses and Glasshouses

Author: John Elliott, Townsville Branch

Published: Journal June 2020

On the 15th of March, 2020, the Native Plant Society visited the Townsville James Cook University (JCU) campus to tour the greenhouses, glasshouses and some of their higher profile landscaping to see how they are utilising our native flora. Brandan Espe (Environmental Officer and propagatist extraordinaire!) began the tour in the greenhouse where a wide range of both exotic and native flora is grown, with some highlights being the Banksia plagiocarpa, Borya septentrionalis, Calytrix microphylla, Nepenthes rowaniae and Tenax and various other uncommonly cultivated species.

Here we discussed how Brandan is engaged with research into germination triggers of our native Australian flora, as well as a conservation initiative to collect and reinforce ex-situ colonies of Myrtaceae at risk of the myrtle rust Austropuccinia psidii. These actions required the attainment of a permit to collect seed and cuttings from a wide range of Queensland National Parks, that has allowed the trials, and subsequently the university, to greatly enhance their species, subspecies and variant collection.

From here we moved down to the Glasshouses, one of which is used as the university’s quarantine for potentially infected stock from both the field and other sources. The other as a ‘stove house’ to better suite a wide range of tropical species, with various members of the Utricularia, Lobelia, Hydnophytum, Dischidia and others, coming together to build a tropical dream collection.

Of particular interest in this facility was the complex Nepenthes hybrid containing a parental representative of every Nepenthes species in Australia, the specimen itself coming from wild collected seed and so being one of the most complex native Australian hybrids held in any collection.

We then visited the Science Place to see a mature Acacia homaloclada, a vulnerable species from the Hinchinbrook region with a white waxy trunk, stem and leaves, before returning to our start point via the new Central Plaza, a landscape dominated by Vitex trifolia, Cymbopogon bombycinus and Scaevola aemula and scattered with the vulnerable blue cycad, Cycas cairnsiana.