Seed Hunters in the news

Date posted: 31 January 2018

There's been little rest for the South Australian Seed Conservation Centre team over summer, and some recent work has landed its efforts in the media spotlight.

Arckaringa daisy

In late 2017 the team, and the State Herbarium's Peter Lang, was part of a survey team that discovered new populations of the endangered purple-flowering Arckaringa daisy (Olearia arckaringensis) at the Arckaringa breakaways, north of Coober Pedy.

This species was only first discovered by Peter in the region by chance in 2000, and only two other populations were discovered in 2011.

This most recent survey, which also included staff from the SA Arid Lands region, landholders, volunteers, traditional owners and staff from the Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park took more than 100 hours and covered more than 100 kilometres of Breakaway country.

More than 2,000 Arckaringa Daisy plants in several new populations were counted by the time survey was complete.

The discoveries were covered in The Advertiser, Atlas Obscura and others, and you can read more about the survey in SA Arid Land's media release, the State Herbarium's blog post and DEWNR's newsletter, The Weekly.

Threatened orchid project

The Seed Conservation Centre's work with threatened orchids also hit the news in January, with iconic children's science TV show Totally Wild picking up the yarn.

The featured project - a unique collaboration between the seed hunters, students from Kildare College and volunteers from the Native Orchid Society of South Australia - is aimed at saving some of SA's endangered orchid species from extinction.

You can catch the episode at the Totally Wild website (skip to 15:39 for the story).