Precinct Feb 06 Q5 - University of Liverpool

Precinct Issue 210 10
NEWS
New book maps journey
of the rowan tree
A REMARKABLE BOOK BASED ON WORK CARRIED OUT OVER THE LAST 30 YEARS
AT NESS GARDENS HAS BEEN PUBLISHED BY KEW GARDEN ENTERPRISES
Beautifully illustrated with 20 full-page
paintings by internationally renowned
Liverpool botanical illustrator Josephine
Hague and more than 100 photographs, the
monograph is a testament to the collaboration
possible between artist and scientist.
The author, Dr Hugh McAllister from Ness
Gardens, says he was given the unique
opportunity by Liverpool University Botanic
Garden: “Neither Alfred K Bulley, the
Liverpool cotton merchant who built
Ness Gardens, nor George Forrest, the
principal plant collector he sponsored,
could have had any idea of the potential
importance of Ness in the botanical
world, placing it third only to Kew and
Edinburgh in this country today.
“Thanks to their semi-commercial
partnership and, later, to Lois Bulley’s
immense generosity in bestowing the
Gardens to the University, the foundations
were laid for special plant collections to
be grown. The Civil Service structure of
the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew and
Edinburgh do not allow their botanists to
do both the growing and the studying,
while other university botanic gardens
simply have not the space available for
extensive, significant tree collections
which need a lot of growing room.
“When I arrived in 1972 it was evident
to both the director, J K (Ken) Hulme and
myself that whilst the Gardens contained
a very wide and interesting range of
species, disappointingly few were
documented as ‘of known wild source’.
For Ness to become a botanic garden of
any national, let alone international,
standing, this had to be remedied. Indeed,
it is the growing of such plants which
defines the term ‘botanic garden’. Some
plants came from the international seed
exchange system of which Ness was part;
many other collections came from private
collectors who have been overwhelmingly
generous in supplying Ness with seed
from their expeditions.
“However, it is to a collection made by
George Forrest in the high mountains of
Yunnan, SW China in 1921 that the most
recent Kew monograph owes its
existence. A particularly attractive
white-fruited mountain ash attracted my
attention in the autumn of ’72, and we
realised that we had an undescribed
species new to science. In 1980 this new
species was named Sorbus forrestii.
My subsequent attempts to identify
misnamed rowans (mountain ash) around
the Gardens showed me how confused
the classification of the whole group was,
even though they are common trees
throughout all temperate regions of the
Northern Hemisphere. Today it is very
pleasing to affirm that Ness has many
more species and individual collections
of known wild origin in cultivation than it
has ever had.”
Hugh McAllister and Josephine Hague,
The Genus Sorbus: Mountain Ash and Other
Rowans published by RBG Kew Enterprises
Ltd priced £32 can be purchased from Ness
Gardens or ordered from any good bookshop.
D
r Heidrun Feuchtmayr and a team
from the School of Biological
Sciences are conducting a two year project
in collaboration with scientists from
Belgium, Germany, Norway, Iceland and
Denmark, to assess whether a predicted
rise in climate temperature for the UK and
parts of Europe will increase the toxicity of
algae in the country’s lakes and ponds.