Botany is the study of plant material and botanists are scientists who have grouped plants with similar characteristics into family lists. The Rutaceae family has plants in our region. The generic groups included are: Boronia, Geijera, Phebalium, Philotheca, Zieria, and Flindersia. However, sometimes their identity becomes smudged, blurred, and hard to pin down. When this happens you may find you are entering a time warp, with a one-way ticket to … The Twilight Zone.
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Elizabeth Park, Dubbo Regional Botanic Garden (just across the road from Orana Mall), have some Rutaceae plants. We are proud to have a super advanced specimen called Flindersia australis (Australian Teak, or Crow’s Ash). This Rutaceae family plant has compound foliage, a stout trunk, and is doing fabulously in Dubbo’s harsh climate. The Australian Teak is the most widely used and durable of Aussie timbers.
Rainforest Flindersia has a relative which thrives in our western region. It is native to further west and north from Dubbo. This tree is Flindersia maculosa, also called Spotted Tree, or Leopardwood. Found in Cobar, Walgett, Nyngan and Broken Hill, Leopardwood has cream-coloured flowers in loose terminal clusters, can grow 12 metres tall, and the foliage gives fair drought forage for stock.
Leopardwood bark is mottled, white, orange, and a light grey colour. I’m told by a one-time Cobar resident that the dark spots can simply drop off. Yes, the leopard can lose his spots. His very identity! Can you imagine a grouping of leopardwood, local wilga trees, and flindersia, all in the rutaceae family, in the same collection? At Elizabeth Park we plant the rainforest collection by family.
However, the startling news about the family rutaceae has become apparent. Genus Flindersia represented by our prized Australian Teak is now in its own family of Flindersiaceae, (they made it up). All very nice, of course.
But is this possible? Previous family rutaceae is on a totally different mound in the oasis theme section.
In fact it has been done before with the same plants. Yes, Flindersia genus was at one time placed comfortably in the Meliaceae family, alongside the notorious White Cedar, a genus (Melia) regarded as toxic and a nuisance despite its wide popularity. Here is a troubled family indeed.
Certainly all this family changing can be unsettling for those trying to figure which plant belongs where?
It just might be that when you try to get a handle on all this, you have turned a key in a doorway to a wondrous world, you have entered Rod Serling’s ‘The Twilight Zone.’ (Fade out with fractured theme tune please).
