Many ANBG guides surprise their groups following the main path by stopping at an otherwise unassuming small tree in the corner of Section 78. Only steps away are the much more fascinating rainforest gully in one direction and the iconic Wollemi Pine in the other.
Yet this glossy elliptical-leaved tree with its profuse bunches of pretty centimetre-wide fluffy white flowers in summer offers many opportunities for the guide to spin a yarn or two—with a contemporary Canberra connection thrown in. There must be few plants in the Gardens better suited to explain so simply the otherwise bewildering logic behind the scientific naming of plants!
We are before a part-grown tree, curiously out of place in Canberra’s winter, as opposed to its home range of the Queensland Coastal Rainforest. It would probably be happier in the nearby rainforest gully! Yet it thrives, even if nowhere near its natural height of up to eight metres.
Long known, but even yet by no means fully exploited for its commercial potential, the leaves offer man a dual reward. The plant is well named in common parlance as Lemon Myrtle (also Lemon Ironwood). Its essential oils give a distinction to products like perfumes, cosmetics or even a bracing after-shave. Dried, the leaves are finding favour on supermarket shelves under its favoured common name.
It is about now the guide launches his or her spiel onto the unprepared visitor. Happily the plant is usually co-operative in having shed a leaf or two and laid them conveniently on the ground beneath. But first we have to do battle with the dreaded Latinised form of the very English name that gives itself to that of the genus. The wise, if enthusiastic, guide will skip trying to unpack the rules for turning English—or Greek or any other language—into Latin. He will do well just to take the botanists’ word for it.
Backhouse? James Backhouse, born in Durham County in 1794, died 1869. The circumstances of his parents had already set the path for James’ life to unfold. They were wealthy Quakers. The Quaker in young James would call him to far places to bring a greater humanity to miserable people; the inherited wealth, supplementing that of other Quakers, would support that calling. But another leaf had yet to be written in the book of his life.
He set out to be a chemist, even beginning an apprenticeship. But tuberculosis put paid to that and he looked for an outdoor avocation. To be a nurseryman seemed a good choice—and a fortuitous one for our ANBG visitors.
Following training as a nurseryman he bought a nursery, with his brother, in York in 1816.
Imbued with the Quaker philosophy of justice and humanity he, with a colleague, sailed for Australia in late 1831. In Hobart Town they began what for James would be a busy six years in Australia. Visiting convicts, remote settlers and Aboriginal communities in every state they produced a dozen reports—and far-reaching recommendations for reform. Among those Backhouse influenced was Alexander Maconochie, who would introduce a whole new regime of humanity when he arrived on Norfolk Island as Commandant in 1840.
And the whole while James was collecting specimens of Australian flora to send back to Kew. For his diligence a new genus, with its handful of species, would be named for him as Backhousia.
The guide is well into his or her story. But what about the citriodora?
At this point one of those shed leaves takes centre stage. A quick crush by the guide and an invitation to smell the result completes the story.
The powerful lemon smell universally evokes the response ‘it smells just like lemon’. Citriodora — smells like!
An unassuming plant beside the path offers a whole story : of a generous selfeffacing man, of a powerful description of a plant’s uniqueness, and of how we have those really logical names for plants. Nearly two centuries later Norfolk Island’s Alexander Maconochie, powerfully influenced by the humanity of the quiet Yorkshire Quaker, gives his name to the new ACT prison—claimed as the most advanced in the world for its humanity.
What began with a nineteenth century Yorkshire nurseryman continues in twenty-first century Canberra. Motorists on the Monaro Highway pass the Alexander Maconochie Correctional Centre and wonder ‘Where does that name come from? What made him worth remembering?’ Visitors to the Australian National Botanic Gardens who imagined ahead nothing more than a quiet afternoon stroll have learnt how we name our plants,and probably a great deal besides.
All that in a totally unassuming plant with glossy leaves and fluffy white flowers in summer quietly growing beside the path
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The Bernard Fennessy "What's
in a Name" Award 2009
