August 20, 2025 • 22 mins
In 2018 a team of intrepid explorers came in to the possession of a treasure map - one which would see them venture half way around the world to the Australian island of Tasmania.
Those explorers were a team of garden experts from across the UK and Ireland who were now on a historic mission to save and catalogue plants for the benefit of people and the planet.
Following in the footsteps of the historic plant hunters, find out what was in store for the team of modern-day collectors and how natural history has helped to shape gardens around the world.
Production
Host: Rosie Holdsworth
Producer: Jack Glover
Sound Design: Jesus Gomez
Contributors
Charlie Bancroft and team BIBET
Caroline Ikin
Images courtesy and with thanks from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Tasmania. All Rights Reserved.
Discover More
Explore a garden lovers home at Nymans in West Sussex where some of the collected species are now flourishing https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/sussex/nymans
Read Charlie’s report here: https://merlin-trust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/718-Charlie-Bancroft-compressed.pdf
Find out more about historic plant hunters from our friends at Kew Gardens https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/adventure-and-discovery-around-the-world-with-plant-hunters
BIBET Botantic Gardens
Republic of Ireland https://www.botanicgardens.ie/kilmacurragh/
Northern Ireland https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/northern-ireland/mount-stewart Wales https://botanicgarden.wales/
Tasmania https://gardens.tas.gov.au/
If you'd like to get in touch with feedback, or have a story connected with the National Trust, you can contact us at podcasts@nationaltrust.org.uk
Following in the footsteps of the historic plant hunters, find out what was in store for the team of modern-day collectors and how natural history has helped to shape gardens around the world.
Production
Host: Rosie Holdsworth
Producer: Jack Glover
Sound Design: Jesus Gomez
Contributors
Charlie Bancroft and team BIBET
Caroline Ikin
Images courtesy and with thanks from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Tasmania. All Rights Reserved.
Discover More
Explore a garden lovers home at Nymans in West Sussex where some of the collected species are now flourishing https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/sussex/nymans
Read Charlie’s report here: https://merlin-trust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/718-Charlie-Bancroft-compressed.pdf
Find out more about historic plant hunters from our friends at Kew Gardens https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/adventure-and-discovery-around-the-world-with-plant-hunters
BIBET Botantic Gardens
Republic of Ireland https://www.botanicgardens.ie/kilmacurragh/
Northern Ireland https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/northern-ireland/mount-stewart Wales https://botanicgarden.wales/
Tasmania https://gardens.tas.gov.au/
If you'd like to get in touch with feedback, or have a story connected with the National Trust, you can contact us at podcasts@nationaltrust.org.uk
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (00:36):
It's Sunday the 14th of January, my Dad's
birthday, happy birthday. We setoff this morning, early morning
from the campsite at CradleMountain.
We're surrounded by tree fernswhich are mammoths and all
different types of ferns. It'sreally cool and damp and it's
(00:58):
just amazing kind of environmentto walk around in so different
to the environments that we'vebeen to already.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (01:09):
This story is one that has been growing with
us for a long time, with theseeds being sown almost 100
years ago.
It takes place in a faraway landwith blood-sucking beasts, rope
bridges, waterfalls andpoisonous plant life. I'm Ranger
Rosie Holdsworth. Welcome to thewild tale of the plant hunters.
(01:40):
The voice you heard at the startis that of Charlie Bancroft, a
gardener from Nymans in WestSussex, who in 2018, alongside a
team of botanists from acrossthe UK and Ireland, were
presented with a discovery. Thediary and collecting notes of a
Mr Harold Comber.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (02:00):
Harold Comber went on two trips, one to Chile
in I think 1925 and then he wentto Tasmania and stayed there for
a year.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (02:09):
The Comber family have played an important
role in the history of Nymansand its ornate gardens and
grounds.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (02:16):
So you had James Comber, the head gardener
here at Nymans and Harold Comberwas his son.
And Harold Comber grew up on theestate as a young boy and then
got interested in horticultureand went on to do these two
plant hunting expeditions.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (02:32):
Towards the start of 2018, a call was made
by Mary Miles Comber, thedaughter of Harold, to the then
head gardener of Nymans. In herpossession were the blueprints,
a treasure map if you will,detailing all of the plants and
collections gathered fromHarold's 1929 expedition to
Tasmania.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (02:51):
Harold Comber is someone that's not relatively
well known in the horticulturalworld in terms of bringing
plants to UK and so the headgardener set out that he wanted
to kind of celebrate HaroldComber and one of the ways to do
(03:11):
that was to follow in one of theexpeditions.
I think on receiving theinformation and these collecting
notes, yeah, I got really,really excited about it and that
was kind of, yeah, the impetusto want to go.
Tasmania was picked becausethere used to be a Tasmanian
walkway in the wild garden,which has been lost now.
(03:33):
So it was to restore theTasmanian walkway, highlight
Harold Comber as a plant hunterand also my role here at Nymans
was to restore the rock gardenand a lot of the flora that they
have in Tasmania... They have alot of like alpine and subalpine
flora and so that would havebeen perfect for growing in the
(03:56):
rock garden.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (03:59):
A plan was hatched and together with a team
from Mount Stewart in NorthernIreland and the National
Botanical Garden Of Wales in theRepublic Of Ireland, Charlie and
head gardener at the timeStephen Herrington boarded a
plane to the southern hemisphereon Project BIBET, the British
and Irish botanical expeditionto Tasmania.
(04:19):
While the team headed off on aconservation mission for public
benefit, historically, theseplant hunters or plant
collectors would have beenfunded by private financiers
keen to flex on their foliage.
CAROLINE IKIN (04:34):
Plant collecting really came to life in the 19th
century when lots of new plantswere discovered in various
foreign countries.
My name is Caroline Ikin and I'mthe curator at Nymans in
Standen.
People were going off to placeslike China and Japan where
(04:54):
foreigners hadn't been inbefore.
The borders were closed untilthe second half of the 19th
century and there was this greatdemand in Britain and elsewhere
in Europe for new and excitingplants.
Plant collectors were sent outsometimes by nurseries,
sometimes by private collectorsor botanic gardens.
(05:16):
They brought back plants toBritain, plants and seeds which
really changed the face ofgardens. They were able to plant
colourful bedding plant schemeswith some of these exotic plants
coming back.
They were able to fill theirglass houses with orchids and
other unusual plants andtropical specimens. They were
(05:36):
able to plant arboretums, sothese fantastic new types of fir
trees and monkey puzzle treeswere coming back. So there was
all sorts of new opportunitiesfor gardening.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (05:48):
For Charlie, our modern day collector, a love
for collecting specimens beganat a young age, although these
were rarely plants.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (05:57):
No, oh no, no, no! My Dad had an allotment and
I hated going! Like really hatedit!
But always like being interestedin the outdoors and nature. When
we used to go on walks, I justused to collect anything and
bring it home like sheep skullsand bones of things or anything
that I'd collect and then my mumwould have to be trying to clean
(06:18):
it because we brought it home.
I always think the plant thatgot me interested in
horticulture was a Fritillariaor Snakeshead and they're purple
and white checkerboard- I don'tknow if you've seen them? Like a
bell-like flower.
Real, like how did nature decideto create this thing with these
squares of white and purple?Like it just seems totally
(06:39):
crazy.
Yeah, Dad finds it hilariousthat I do it for a job now and I
hated it and, yeah, have kind ofgot into it from a second
career. But I totally fell intoit, but I feel like I was
probably meant to fall into itsomehow, yeah.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (06:56):
Arriving in Miena, the BIBET team were
joined by members from the RoyalTasmanian Botanical Gardens, the
lowdown on local flora and toget the essentials for the
adventure.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (07:09):
So we met up with them, I think they just
wanted to check that we hadeverything that we kind of
needed, like herbarium pressesfor collecting the herbariums
and you need lots of bags orenvelopes for seed collecting.
And then you need to be able toprocess that seed in the
evening.
And also because it was thebotanic garden they had like
(07:32):
their native plant section so Ijust like kind of just went
straight there and just thoughtthis is where you need we need
to be kind of just looking.
Because although we'd doneresearch before we went
everything was just online or inbooks I hadn't actually seen
anything and so yeah it was justtrying to just soak up that
before you're on the road.
(07:53):
The good thing about a botanicgarden is that everything's
labelled, so you look at theplant and then you immediately
look at the label to see what itis.
Obviously when you're in thefield nothing's labelled, you're
just having to identify it asmuch as you can at that time.
A lot of plants are endemic toTasmania so I wouldn't have seen
(08:15):
them anywhere else necessarily,so the whole process of being
out was a total-
A kind of new experience for methat I was just seeing plants
that, just to look round tothink, I don't recognise
anything here.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (08:31):
After a few days training in the bag, the
BIBET team ventured out. Theirfirst stop, Lake Augusta, a
shimmering body of water flankedby alpine parabolic sand dunes,
an extremely rare habitat that'sbeen formed by winds over many
centuries.
With local guide James Wood fromTasmania's seed bank at her
(08:52):
side, back in 2018, Charliediscovered what makes this place
unique and why it was anessential stop for Harold
Comber.
JAMES WOOD (09:01):
What's really fascinating about this area that
we're in now is that we aresitting on the edge of an alpine
sand dune system. So sand dunesare things people tend to think
of being as coastal, but you canget alpine sand dune systems.
They're not very common.
But Lake Augusta is one of thosespots you go to and that really
(09:22):
houses a really interesting andquite diverse, quite unique
community vegetation here andthere's a number of plants that
really only occur in this area.
There's a number of rare andthreatened species that occur in
this area as well. There's alsosome fairly unique insects that
live in this area.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (09:40):
Tasmania doesn't have kind of high
mountains but we were collectinghigher up rather than at the
lowlands because it doesn't getas cold there as it does in the
UK. So obviously we wanted tocollect the hardiest plants that
we could.
So if you collect higher up,they're obviously going to be
experiencing coldertemperatures. So hopefully
(10:01):
hardier for UK gardens.
We were always kind of climbingup somewhere. And so you would
get to these plateaus and it wasalmost like a painting. There
would always be like a lake andthen you would have these
shrubs, almost as if they'd beenplanted specifically there.
(10:22):
Probably say this about everyspot, but it was just beautiful.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (10:27):
Having spent the day hiking around Lake
Augusta and its sand dunesystem, the next challenge for
the team was vertically, towardsthe summit of Projection Bluff,
a notable peak within themountain ranges of Tasmania.
It's there that head gardenerStephen Herrington was hot on
the trail of a rare blue andpink poppy collected by Harold
Comber.
STEPHEN HERRINGTON (10:50):
So we've been climbing for an hour or so
now and we're virtually at thetop of the summit, probably
about 1300 metres. I've justspotted this amazing Olearia
Phlogopappa.
So Comber collected this when hewas out here in 1930 and he
actually collected a pink andblue form but it's not really
out here much anymore we haven'tseen it so we're hoping to catch
(11:12):
it again as we go up.
But i'm just gonna-
So this is it's kind of a daisybush on the side of the mountain
here but you can just see forabsolutely miles right across
the the country.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (11:25):
Stephen was amazing to go with because he'd
get really excited like all ofus about everything that we saw.
It wasn't too strenuous but Ithink obviously you're getting
really excited about the plantsso you're darting about rather
rather than just going straightup. Your trajectory is a little
bit wiggled.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (11:42):
A few days in, it was starting to dawn on the
team how lucky they were to beliving in modern times with
relatively easy access comparedwith the earlier expeditions.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (11:52):
When you read his diary, Tasmania wasn't as
easy accessible as when he wasthere. A lot of the time he was
on horseback or just trekking,whereas we could get roads to
certain places and we had cars.
And, like, the bush is just likea thick-
It's impenetrable to try and getthrough so for him like and he
(12:13):
talks about that so much that itwas just really difficult to
actually access certain placesso in a way we had it a bit a
bit easier I think and also withlike modern technology and
things and but yeah for him Ijust think quite a feat to
undertake.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (12:33):
The reliance on botanists from abroad is
nothing new and is somethingHarold Comber will have had to
hand but it's only really in themodern day that the local
experts are celebrated.
Britain and its gardeners hadthe weight of an empire behind
them, so the recognition oflocal knowledge was often an
afterthought, as Caroline Ikinexplains.
CAROLINE IKIN (12:52):
When the plant collectors were going abroad,
they would plan their trip tocertain areas to target
particular plants usually, andthey would in advance make
contact with botanic gardens.Perhaps local colonial
administrators who would helpthem with the logistics of their
planning, because they wereoften going into quite literally
uncharted territory.
(13:12):
So they were very reliant onlocal people and local knowledge
to guide them to where theplants were growing, to guide
them over, you know, streams andmountains and treacherous
terrain.
The local people of the area arereally the unrecognised heroes
of these plant collectingexpeditions.
They were the ones with theknowledge and the expertise. And
without them facilitating theplant collecting trips, then
(13:36):
really, you know, they wouldhave been much less successful.
I think nowadays, we tend tothink of the plant collectors as
heroic types, generally men whobraved all sorts of personal
hardships and physical hardshipsin the pursuit of collecting
these plants. And I think therecertainly was a bit of that,
they were clearly verydetermined individuals.
(13:56):
But we have tended to forget thereliance on the local people to
help them.
Often these people areunrecorded, we don't know their
names, we don't know much aboutthem, but we certainly know they
were there helping, and withouttheir help, none of this would
have been possible.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (14:11):
Recordings of the local people were not the
only thing that was oftenoverlooked by the collectors.
CAROLINE IKIN (14:18):
Also, a lot of these collectors were going into
parts of the world where theydidn't really have permission to
be.
Often they were deliberatelysneaking over borders to collect
in places like Tibet, wherethey're sort of political
differences and they shouldn'treally have been there. So they
were breaking the rules a bit inpursuit of these plants.
And when the plants came back toBritain, there was this sense
(14:40):
that they'd suddenly beendiscovered.
But of course, these plants hadbeen known forever in their
countries of origin. They'd beenused by local people. They might
have had medicinal uses orculinary uses.
And all that knowledge wasreally unrecorded and forgotten
when the plants came back toBritain.
And they were seen as thesegreat new discoveries, new
plants in Britain. So there wasa certain amount of kind of
(15:03):
whitewashing of the origins ofthese plants and the peoples who
would use them in their nativelands.
And there's also theenvironmental destruction.
I mean, they weren't just takingone or two seeds from plants,
they were literally collectingthousands of seeds. There's
records of taking tens ofthousands of bulbs, so literally
(15:24):
wiping out single species fromdifferent parts of the hillside
or the countryside where thesethings were growing.
So there are some sort ofproblematic environmental and
cultural things that we need tothink about when we're
celebrating these plantcollectors today, because yes,
they brought an awful lot ofbenefit to British horticulture,
but some of it was at theexpense of some of the other
(15:46):
countries in the empire andbeyond where these plant
collectors were operating.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (15:55):
As well as the challenges presented by the
landscape, the team also had togo toe-to-toe, quite literally,
with the local wildlife, comingface-to-face with an egg-laying
mammal and a bloodthirstycreature lurking in the long
grasses. As the team recalledback at their base.
JAMES WOOD (16:11):
And we actually saw an echidna on the way back,
which is, I think, a bonus.
Don't often get to see anegg-laying mammal, but just
wandering alongside the road,which is a nice bonus at the end
of the day, heading back home.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (16:26):
Yeah, but what wasn't such a bonus was the
leeches. No, I don't thinkanybody survived-
STEPHEN HERRINGTON (16:34):
No, everybody got the leeches!
Yeah, so-
JAMES WOOD (16:39):
It's not a real Tasmanian bush experience if you
haven't picked up severalleeches and filled one of your
socks full of blood. So, yeah,that's all part of the
experience.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (16:54):
The button grass is a beautiful grass that
they've got out there and theflower does look like a button.
It's very dense grass and itgrows in wet, almost like a
peaty moorland and so it thriveswith leeches.
And obviously the first time wedidn't know that and we went in
there collecting and thensomeone was like, oh, I've got
(17:16):
something on me.
And then before you knew it,everyone had the leeches
everywhere, which the leecheswere small and they weren't a
problem.
I think what was a problem wasyou didn't know where they'd
gotten. Later that day, you werestill finding leeches.
Yeah. But in terms of a lot ofthe things that we could have
encountered in Tasmania, leecheswere nothing and I think we did
(17:39):
get quite gung-ho because youare just putting your hand in a
shrub to collect the seed andthat becomes the norm.
And we did see a few snakes aswe were walking but only a few
times that you did kind of get abit blasé about it and think, oh
yeah, this is fine.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (18:00):
One of the plants that first caught
Charlie's eye was like somethingfrom another planet.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (18:06):
Well, they have like these Richea
Pandanifolia and they're justlike massive columns, really and
then it just has this crazy bitof foliage at the top.
And I remember Harold Comberjust saying how alien they are
and how they don't look likeanything else that should be in
(18:29):
that habitat because most of theflora is like-
You've got the Eucalyptus andyou've got Nothofagus, which is
a very small tree in comparisonto eucalyptus and then you've
got a lot of scrub, so a lot ofshrubs and things.
And then you've got this RicheaPandanifolia, which is just
(18:51):
totally just this column thatjust sticks out. So yeah, that
was crazy to see.
CAROLINE IKIN (19:00):
Plant collecting has really changed the face of
gardens in Britain.
I mean, there's no doubt aboutit that these new plants coming
in from abroad gave all sorts ofnew possibilities in terms of
garden design, in terms ofbuilding up collections of trees
in arboretums, in terms ofcreating great show glasshouses
full of orchids and tropicalplants, creating big bedding
(19:22):
schemes and parterres.
All these things were madepossible because of the new
plants that were suddenlyflooding the market.
But of course, now there aremuch tighter controls on plants
that can be brought in, in termsof giving recognition and some
benefit to the countries thatthey're coming from and those
peoples that live in some ofthose places.
(19:43):
Plants are now quarantined whenthey come into Britain, whereas
in the past, they just came inin their wardian cases, which is
the plant cases that theybrought them over with, with
soil from other countries, withplant material, with bugs and
worms and everything in thesoil.
Was all coming back to Britainand you can imagine the sort of
damage that that was causing,introducing pests and pathogens
(20:05):
that weren't known to Britainbefore.
Now when plant collectors do goout, there's all sorts of
regulations and things put inplace so that we minimise
environmental damage to Britainand to the countries that we're
taking material from.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (20:22):
Today, collectors will still be
furnishing private collectionsand nurseries but there is also
a new wave of plant lovers whosegoal is to protect the rarest of
the rare and to prolong thecontinuation of plant species in
the growing battle againstclimate change.
Gardens across the world arechanging and it's only with
expert knowledge that we canwork together to ensure that
(20:44):
they can still be enjoyed foryears to come.
(21:05):
Thanks for listening to thisepisode of Wild Tales. If you
want to discover more, then besure to check out the links in
our show notes, where you'llfind loads of info about the
botanic gardens mentioned andfind a deep dive report into the
trip.
For more from Wild Tales, followus on your favourite podcast app
and if you really loved thisepisode, then you can hear it
(21:26):
again next week by following oursister show, Back When, where
James Grasby will be taking youon an adventure through natural
history. See you next time.
It's Sunday the 14th of January, my Dad's
birthday, happy birthday. We setoff this morning, early morning
from the campsite at CradleMountain.
We're surrounded by tree fernswhich are mammoths and all
different types of ferns. It'sreally cool and damp and it's
(00:58):
just amazing kind of environmentto walk around in so different
to the environments that we'vebeen to already.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (01:09):
This story is one that has been growing with
us for a long time, with theseeds being sown almost 100
years ago.
It takes place in a faraway landwith blood-sucking beasts, rope
bridges, waterfalls andpoisonous plant life. I'm Ranger
Rosie Holdsworth. Welcome to thewild tale of the plant hunters.
(01:40):
The voice you heard at the startis that of Charlie Bancroft, a
gardener from Nymans in WestSussex, who in 2018, alongside a
team of botanists from acrossthe UK and Ireland, were
presented with a discovery. Thediary and collecting notes of a
Mr Harold Comber.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (02:00):
Harold Comber went on two trips, one to Chile
in I think 1925 and then he wentto Tasmania and stayed there for
a year.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (02:09):
The Comber family have played an important
role in the history of Nymansand its ornate gardens and
grounds.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (02:16):
So you had James Comber, the head gardener
here at Nymans and Harold Comberwas his son.
And Harold Comber grew up on theestate as a young boy and then
got interested in horticultureand went on to do these two
plant hunting expeditions.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (02:32):
Towards the start of 2018, a call was made
by Mary Miles Comber, thedaughter of Harold, to the then
head gardener of Nymans. In herpossession were the blueprints,
a treasure map if you will,detailing all of the plants and
collections gathered fromHarold's 1929 expedition to
Tasmania.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (02:51):
Harold Comber is someone that's not relatively
well known in the horticulturalworld in terms of bringing
plants to UK and so the headgardener set out that he wanted
to kind of celebrate HaroldComber and one of the ways to do
(03:11):
that was to follow in one of theexpeditions.
I think on receiving theinformation and these collecting
notes, yeah, I got really,really excited about it and that
was kind of, yeah, the impetusto want to go.
Tasmania was picked becausethere used to be a Tasmanian
walkway in the wild garden,which has been lost now.
(03:33):
So it was to restore theTasmanian walkway, highlight
Harold Comber as a plant hunterand also my role here at Nymans
was to restore the rock gardenand a lot of the flora that they
have in Tasmania... They have alot of like alpine and subalpine
flora and so that would havebeen perfect for growing in the
(03:56):
rock garden.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (03:59):
A plan was hatched and together with a team
from Mount Stewart in NorthernIreland and the National
Botanical Garden Of Wales in theRepublic Of Ireland, Charlie and
head gardener at the timeStephen Herrington boarded a
plane to the southern hemisphereon Project BIBET, the British
and Irish botanical expeditionto Tasmania.
(04:19):
While the team headed off on aconservation mission for public
benefit, historically, theseplant hunters or plant
collectors would have beenfunded by private financiers
keen to flex on their foliage.
CAROLINE IKIN (04:34):
Plant collecting really came to life in the 19th
century when lots of new plantswere discovered in various
foreign countries.
My name is Caroline Ikin and I'mthe curator at Nymans in
Standen.
People were going off to placeslike China and Japan where
(04:54):
foreigners hadn't been inbefore.
The borders were closed untilthe second half of the 19th
century and there was this greatdemand in Britain and elsewhere
in Europe for new and excitingplants.
Plant collectors were sent outsometimes by nurseries,
sometimes by private collectorsor botanic gardens.
(05:16):
They brought back plants toBritain, plants and seeds which
really changed the face ofgardens. They were able to plant
colourful bedding plant schemeswith some of these exotic plants
coming back.
They were able to fill theirglass houses with orchids and
other unusual plants andtropical specimens. They were
(05:36):
able to plant arboretums, sothese fantastic new types of fir
trees and monkey puzzle treeswere coming back. So there was
all sorts of new opportunitiesfor gardening.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (05:48):
For Charlie, our modern day collector, a love
for collecting specimens beganat a young age, although these
were rarely plants.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (05:57):
No, oh no, no, no! My Dad had an allotment and
I hated going! Like really hatedit!
But always like being interestedin the outdoors and nature. When
we used to go on walks, I justused to collect anything and
bring it home like sheep skullsand bones of things or anything
that I'd collect and then my mumwould have to be trying to clean
(06:18):
it because we brought it home.
I always think the plant thatgot me interested in
horticulture was a Fritillariaor Snakeshead and they're purple
and white checkerboard- I don'tknow if you've seen them? Like a
bell-like flower.
Real, like how did nature decideto create this thing with these
squares of white and purple?Like it just seems totally
(06:39):
crazy.
Yeah, Dad finds it hilariousthat I do it for a job now and I
hated it and, yeah, have kind ofgot into it from a second
career. But I totally fell intoit, but I feel like I was
probably meant to fall into itsomehow, yeah.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (06:56):
Arriving in Miena, the BIBET team were
joined by members from the RoyalTasmanian Botanical Gardens, the
lowdown on local flora and toget the essentials for the
adventure.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (07:09):
So we met up with them, I think they just
wanted to check that we hadeverything that we kind of
needed, like herbarium pressesfor collecting the herbariums
and you need lots of bags orenvelopes for seed collecting.
And then you need to be able toprocess that seed in the
evening.
And also because it was thebotanic garden they had like
(07:32):
their native plant section so Ijust like kind of just went
straight there and just thoughtthis is where you need we need
to be kind of just looking.
Because although we'd doneresearch before we went
everything was just online or inbooks I hadn't actually seen
anything and so yeah it was justtrying to just soak up that
before you're on the road.
(07:53):
The good thing about a botanicgarden is that everything's
labelled, so you look at theplant and then you immediately
look at the label to see what itis.
Obviously when you're in thefield nothing's labelled, you're
just having to identify it asmuch as you can at that time.
A lot of plants are endemic toTasmania so I wouldn't have seen
(08:15):
them anywhere else necessarily,so the whole process of being
out was a total-
A kind of new experience for methat I was just seeing plants
that, just to look round tothink, I don't recognise
anything here.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (08:31):
After a few days training in the bag, the
BIBET team ventured out. Theirfirst stop, Lake Augusta, a
shimmering body of water flankedby alpine parabolic sand dunes,
an extremely rare habitat that'sbeen formed by winds over many
centuries.
With local guide James Wood fromTasmania's seed bank at her
(08:52):
side, back in 2018, Charliediscovered what makes this place
unique and why it was anessential stop for Harold
Comber.
JAMES WOOD (09:01):
What's really fascinating about this area that
we're in now is that we aresitting on the edge of an alpine
sand dune system. So sand dunesare things people tend to think
of being as coastal, but you canget alpine sand dune systems.
They're not very common.
But Lake Augusta is one of thosespots you go to and that really
(09:22):
houses a really interesting andquite diverse, quite unique
community vegetation here andthere's a number of plants that
really only occur in this area.
There's a number of rare andthreatened species that occur in
this area as well. There's alsosome fairly unique insects that
live in this area.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (09:40):
Tasmania doesn't have kind of high
mountains but we were collectinghigher up rather than at the
lowlands because it doesn't getas cold there as it does in the
UK. So obviously we wanted tocollect the hardiest plants that
we could.
So if you collect higher up,they're obviously going to be
experiencing coldertemperatures. So hopefully
(10:01):
hardier for UK gardens.
We were always kind of climbingup somewhere. And so you would
get to these plateaus and it wasalmost like a painting. There
would always be like a lake andthen you would have these
shrubs, almost as if they'd beenplanted specifically there.
(10:22):
Probably say this about everyspot, but it was just beautiful.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (10:27):
Having spent the day hiking around Lake
Augusta and its sand dunesystem, the next challenge for
the team was vertically, towardsthe summit of Projection Bluff,
a notable peak within themountain ranges of Tasmania.
It's there that head gardenerStephen Herrington was hot on
the trail of a rare blue andpink poppy collected by Harold
Comber.
STEPHEN HERRINGTON (10:50):
So we've been climbing for an hour or so
now and we're virtually at thetop of the summit, probably
about 1300 metres. I've justspotted this amazing Olearia
Phlogopappa.
So Comber collected this when hewas out here in 1930 and he
actually collected a pink andblue form but it's not really
out here much anymore we haven'tseen it so we're hoping to catch
(11:12):
it again as we go up.
But i'm just gonna-
So this is it's kind of a daisybush on the side of the mountain
here but you can just see forabsolutely miles right across
the the country.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (11:25):
Stephen was amazing to go with because he'd
get really excited like all ofus about everything that we saw.
It wasn't too strenuous but Ithink obviously you're getting
really excited about the plantsso you're darting about rather
rather than just going straightup. Your trajectory is a little
bit wiggled.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (11:42):
A few days in, it was starting to dawn on the
team how lucky they were to beliving in modern times with
relatively easy access comparedwith the earlier expeditions.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (11:52):
When you read his diary, Tasmania wasn't as
easy accessible as when he wasthere. A lot of the time he was
on horseback or just trekking,whereas we could get roads to
certain places and we had cars.
And, like, the bush is just likea thick-
It's impenetrable to try and getthrough so for him like and he
(12:13):
talks about that so much that itwas just really difficult to
actually access certain placesso in a way we had it a bit a
bit easier I think and also withlike modern technology and
things and but yeah for him Ijust think quite a feat to
undertake.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (12:33):
The reliance on botanists from abroad is
nothing new and is somethingHarold Comber will have had to
hand but it's only really in themodern day that the local
experts are celebrated.
Britain and its gardeners hadthe weight of an empire behind
them, so the recognition oflocal knowledge was often an
afterthought, as Caroline Ikinexplains.
CAROLINE IKIN (12:52):
When the plant collectors were going abroad,
they would plan their trip tocertain areas to target
particular plants usually, andthey would in advance make
contact with botanic gardens.Perhaps local colonial
administrators who would helpthem with the logistics of their
planning, because they wereoften going into quite literally
uncharted territory.
(13:12):
So they were very reliant onlocal people and local knowledge
to guide them to where theplants were growing, to guide
them over, you know, streams andmountains and treacherous
terrain.
The local people of the area arereally the unrecognised heroes
of these plant collectingexpeditions.
They were the ones with theknowledge and the expertise. And
without them facilitating theplant collecting trips, then
(13:36):
really, you know, they wouldhave been much less successful.
I think nowadays, we tend tothink of the plant collectors as
heroic types, generally men whobraved all sorts of personal
hardships and physical hardshipsin the pursuit of collecting
these plants. And I think therecertainly was a bit of that,
they were clearly verydetermined individuals.
(13:56):
But we have tended to forget thereliance on the local people to
help them.
Often these people areunrecorded, we don't know their
names, we don't know much aboutthem, but we certainly know they
were there helping, and withouttheir help, none of this would
have been possible.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (14:11):
Recordings of the local people were not the
only thing that was oftenoverlooked by the collectors.
CAROLINE IKIN (14:18):
Also, a lot of these collectors were going into
parts of the world where theydidn't really have permission to
be.
Often they were deliberatelysneaking over borders to collect
in places like Tibet, wherethey're sort of political
differences and they shouldn'treally have been there. So they
were breaking the rules a bit inpursuit of these plants.
And when the plants came back toBritain, there was this sense
(14:40):
that they'd suddenly beendiscovered.
But of course, these plants hadbeen known forever in their
countries of origin. They'd beenused by local people. They might
have had medicinal uses orculinary uses.
And all that knowledge wasreally unrecorded and forgotten
when the plants came back toBritain.
And they were seen as thesegreat new discoveries, new
plants in Britain. So there wasa certain amount of kind of
(15:03):
whitewashing of the origins ofthese plants and the peoples who
would use them in their nativelands.
And there's also theenvironmental destruction.
I mean, they weren't just takingone or two seeds from plants,
they were literally collectingthousands of seeds. There's
records of taking tens ofthousands of bulbs, so literally
(15:24):
wiping out single species fromdifferent parts of the hillside
or the countryside where thesethings were growing.
So there are some sort ofproblematic environmental and
cultural things that we need tothink about when we're
celebrating these plantcollectors today, because yes,
they brought an awful lot ofbenefit to British horticulture,
but some of it was at theexpense of some of the other
(15:46):
countries in the empire andbeyond where these plant
collectors were operating.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (15:55):
As well as the challenges presented by the
landscape, the team also had togo toe-to-toe, quite literally,
with the local wildlife, comingface-to-face with an egg-laying
mammal and a bloodthirstycreature lurking in the long
grasses. As the team recalledback at their base.
JAMES WOOD (16:11):
And we actually saw an echidna on the way back,
which is, I think, a bonus.
Don't often get to see anegg-laying mammal, but just
wandering alongside the road,which is a nice bonus at the end
of the day, heading back home.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (16:26):
Yeah, but what wasn't such a bonus was the
leeches. No, I don't thinkanybody survived-
STEPHEN HERRINGTON (16:34):
No, everybody got the leeches!
Yeah, so-
JAMES WOOD (16:39):
It's not a real Tasmanian bush experience if you
haven't picked up severalleeches and filled one of your
socks full of blood. So, yeah,that's all part of the
experience.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (16:54):
The button grass is a beautiful grass that
they've got out there and theflower does look like a button.
It's very dense grass and itgrows in wet, almost like a
peaty moorland and so it thriveswith leeches.
And obviously the first time wedidn't know that and we went in
there collecting and thensomeone was like, oh, I've got
(17:16):
something on me.
And then before you knew it,everyone had the leeches
everywhere, which the leecheswere small and they weren't a
problem.
I think what was a problem wasyou didn't know where they'd
gotten. Later that day, you werestill finding leeches.
Yeah. But in terms of a lot ofthe things that we could have
encountered in Tasmania, leecheswere nothing and I think we did
(17:39):
get quite gung-ho because youare just putting your hand in a
shrub to collect the seed andthat becomes the norm.
And we did see a few snakes aswe were walking but only a few
times that you did kind of get abit blasé about it and think, oh
yeah, this is fine.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (18:00):
One of the plants that first caught
Charlie's eye was like somethingfrom another planet.
CHARLIE BANCROFT (18:06):
Well, they have like these Richea
Pandanifolia and they're justlike massive columns, really and
then it just has this crazy bitof foliage at the top.
And I remember Harold Comberjust saying how alien they are
and how they don't look likeanything else that should be in
(18:29):
that habitat because most of theflora is like-
You've got the Eucalyptus andyou've got Nothofagus, which is
a very small tree in comparisonto eucalyptus and then you've
got a lot of scrub, so a lot ofshrubs and things.
And then you've got this RicheaPandanifolia, which is just
(18:51):
totally just this column thatjust sticks out. So yeah, that
was crazy to see.
CAROLINE IKIN (19:00):
Plant collecting has really changed the face of
gardens in Britain.
I mean, there's no doubt aboutit that these new plants coming
in from abroad gave all sorts ofnew possibilities in terms of
garden design, in terms ofbuilding up collections of trees
in arboretums, in terms ofcreating great show glasshouses
full of orchids and tropicalplants, creating big bedding
(19:22):
schemes and parterres.
All these things were madepossible because of the new
plants that were suddenlyflooding the market.
But of course, now there aremuch tighter controls on plants
that can be brought in, in termsof giving recognition and some
benefit to the countries thatthey're coming from and those
peoples that live in some ofthose places.
(19:43):
Plants are now quarantined whenthey come into Britain, whereas
in the past, they just came inin their wardian cases, which is
the plant cases that theybrought them over with, with
soil from other countries, withplant material, with bugs and
worms and everything in thesoil.
Was all coming back to Britainand you can imagine the sort of
damage that that was causing,introducing pests and pathogens
(20:05):
that weren't known to Britainbefore.
Now when plant collectors do goout, there's all sorts of
regulations and things put inplace so that we minimise
environmental damage to Britainand to the countries that we're
taking material from.
ROSIE HOLDSWORTH (20:22):
Today, collectors will still be
furnishing private collectionsand nurseries but there is also
a new wave of plant lovers whosegoal is to protect the rarest of
the rare and to prolong thecontinuation of plant species in
the growing battle againstclimate change.
Gardens across the world arechanging and it's only with
expert knowledge that we canwork together to ensure that
(20:44):
they can still be enjoyed foryears to come.
(21:05):
Thanks for listening to thisepisode of Wild Tales. If you
want to discover more, then besure to check out the links in
our show notes, where you'llfind loads of info about the
botanic gardens mentioned andfind a deep dive report into the
trip.
For more from Wild Tales, followus on your favourite podcast app
and if you really loved thisepisode, then you can hear it
(21:26):
again next week by following oursister show, Back When, where
James Grasby will be taking youon an adventure through natural
history. See you next time.
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