“Fierce Job” In New Guinea

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31780, 10 September 1968, Page 18

“Fierce Job” In New Guinea

Araliaceae, the group of trees to which the New Zealand lancewood belongs, attracted Professor W. R. Philipson to the highlands of New Guinea last month to collect for his botany department at the University of Canterbury. “A fierce job” was his summary on return yesterday.

Some of the species he collected had leaves up to eight feet long and flower clusters 10ft by 18ft “I measured

them exactly," said Professor Philipson in answer to a reporter’s disbelief. He said the flowers were so big that birds dusted the pollen with their wings when they came to sip. “As if this did not present problems enough, the trees are often very splkey and they also harbour hoards of vicious ants.” Professor Philipson had other problems. He had to cut his specimens into manageable sections the size of a large page but show the complete plant—a section of stem where leaves began, a section of leaves, and full sections of the flowers and false fruit. He had arranged to make six “duplicates” and

one exercise took him three hours. After such a day in the field. Professor Philipson and his wife (who was collecting rhododendrons) worked far into the night in the preliminary drying and pressing of their specimens. This was part of a survey of all the plants called “Malesiana”—from the whole Malaya archipelago. Professor Philipson said he found New Guinea a jungle of imperfectly described and recorded botany. It was “beautiful country” often resembling the Southern Alps. There were high peaks, snow, frost, and mountain lakes, and southern beech, snow grass.

and many other species found round Arthur’s Pass. Assisted by the Australian botany division of the Department of Forestry, Professor and Mrs Philipson made four main sorties: to the Finisterre range; Mount Wilhelm, which they scaled to 12,600 ft of its total 15,400 ft; and two others into the central highlands. Professor Philipson shared his wife’s admiration for the wild New Guinea rhododendrons. “They were extraordinarily beautiful plants,” he said, “some shrubs, some small trees, and some growing in the branches of forest trees (which we had to fell to get them), and others in high mountain clefts.”