Tropical plant research blooms in Queensland

Australia's largest collections of tropical plant specimens from northern Queensland have arrived in Cairns in Queensland at their new home - the Australian Tropical Herbarium.

CSIRO's Mr Frank Zich, the curator of the new herbarium, says that herbaria provide an important resource for many kinds of botanical research.

They contain preserved plant specimens and information about them which is used to name and classify plants, understand plant evolutionary history and determine if plants are rare or endangered. Herbarium specimens also provide an historic record of the geographical distribution of plants and how this changes over time.

The Australian Tropical Herbarium combines herbarium specimens from the Australian National Herbarium previously in Atherton, specimens from the Queensland Herbarium in Mareeba and the James Cook University Herbarium collection from Townsville.

It is an unsurpassed representative collection of north Queensland's flora with a basis for becoming the world's premier centre for cataloguing the biodiversity of Queensland's savannnah woodland and tropical rainforest plants.

Containing a state-of-the-art molecular bioscience laboratory, essential for modern plant research, located within the Australian Tropical Forest Institute, the herbarium will attract local and international scientists, and biodiscovery industries to north Queensland.

The Australian Tropical Herbarium is a joint venture between CSIRO, Queensland Department of State Development, Trade and Innovation, Queensland's Environmental Protection Agency, the Australian Department of the Environment and Water Resources, and James Cook University.

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