Plant Collecting in Another Planet (2025) is the new book by Margaret Grose that uncovers Harvard plant collector Ernest Wilson’s largely unknown collecting trip to Australia in 1920-21. In this interview, Margaret discusses with UWAP intern Jess Burns the origins of the book, the research process that took her from Harvard University all the way to Kalgoorlie and elsewhere, and the reason why Australian flora is so otherworldly.
Jess Burns: What drew you to Ernest Wilson’s story, and how did it all begin?
Margaret Grose: I went to MIT as a research fellow, and I met one of the botanists from Harvard, who showed me over the Arnold Arboretum, which is Harvard's Arboretum. He then showed me some of the archives, including Ernest Wilson's. Ernest was British, but he worked at Harvard for years and years. I didn't know much about him; I'd only heard the name, but when I went to Harvard, they told me that he'd spent 14 years in China and was famous for his photography and that he had actually gone to Australia, but my host said, ‘I bet you Australians don’t even know that he had even gone to Australia.’
I came back to Australia, and I checked with a few botanists, and they indeed hadn’t known. Because he was such a famous figure and is regarded as the last of the great plant botanical collectors, they were startled to find out he’d come to Australia. I went back to Harvard to have a look and see if there's anything in the collection from Australia. They really didn't know what they had at all and thought they had some images of Australia but were unsure. At the Herbarium itself, they didn't know if they had any of his collected plant specimens and thought they might have a dozen or 20. I was assigned to a member of the Herbarium staff who was going to take pictures of anything I found, and we stopped in the end at just under 600.
When I started, I thought the work would end up being an article or a couple of articles, and then the more I read his diaries and thought about how I could put it all together, the more I thought it should be more substantial and more of a story that included the landscape. So, it was just something that got bigger as time went on, and I knew it was a project that I wanted to finish and do a reasonable job on but to also go back into those landscapes and to include more landscape description and comment, and to add what had happened to these landscapes in the hundred years since Wilson’s visit.
FIGURE 5.6: Wilson with red tingle, E. jacksonii, as identified by Gardner.26 This species has stringy, red grey bark from its base to high in its canopy. Image: Wilson Y-330 AA. A copy of this image is held in the Forests Department of Western Australia.
Jess: What was the research process for this book like?
Margaret: It was really fun, actually, because it was a mix of researching at the Herbarium and looking at his diaries and getting them transcribed, because they were really atrocious to read. Then there were all the eastern states' diaries that were missing, so to replace those diaries missing in the eastern states, I had to look at the newspaper to even work out where he went.
It ended up being a skewed book because it's mostly concerned with his collecting in Western Australia, and then there is just one big chapter for the eastern states, because there was far less evidence and far fewer photos in the east. Some of the photos that they did have at the Arnold Arboretum were not even Wilson's.
I then went out into the bush and travelled to some of the places that Wilson went and talked to people, and that was very enjoyable. It's a mix of his diaries, what he said to the press who followed him nearly everywhere, and landscape reflections. I have this mix because I wanted it to be a book that's really readable, and if it were just Wilson's diaries, it may not have been as interesting. So, I wanted to put a landscape feeling and comment into the book.
Jess: Throughout the book, you feature a lot of Wilson’s direct words, through diary entries and newspaper articles. How was his story enriched by his writings?
Margaret: I used his diaries to see where he went in Western Australia and the newspaper articles to see where he went in the east. I used them to work out a bit more detail and to work out where some of the photos were taken. What impressed me about his diaries was how much knowledge he had more than 100 years ago about the landscape history of particular features of the Australian flora, ones that he noticed immediately as being different.
I also found it really impressive how quickly he picked up the language of trees in Australia and our landscapes. When I had the transcriber go through, she was confused over some of the language, including ‘jam country’, which she thought must be ‘farm country’. But I knew it wasn’t in WA. It's jam country – an acacia. So, it was really interesting how he picked up all this language straight away.
Newspaper articles told me a great deal about what Wilson was thinking and what concerned him about Australia’s treatment of its trees, which he was highly critical of.
PLATE 3.1 “Banksia grandis Willd. small tree 15 ft – 20 ft flo yellow forests Darling Mt near Perth” 25 October 1920. Number 197 on plant tag.
Jess: As reflected in the title of the book, Wilson described Australia’s flora as though it were from another planet. What about our flora made him say that, and what makes our flora so unique?
Margaret: Australia was attached to Antarctica and was part of Gondwana, which included what is now known as Africa, South America, India, New Zealand, Madagascar, Antarctica and Australia. Australia was the last part of Gondwana to separate from Antarctica, about 35 million years ago, and it just drifted north slowly. When we separated, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current started, which drastically changed the climate of Antarctica and turned it into an icebox, and so all that flora in Antarctica was lost. We drifted north and had no interaction with any other continents and were carrying a sort of unadulterated Gondwanan type of flora. Australia also experienced incredible changes in climate all the way through, and our species evolved in response.
Things like Eucalypts evolved a long while ago, and there were more in South America at one stage, but they've all gone, and the banksias also evolved when we were still attached to Antarctica. So that meant that Australia was different to most of the rest of the world. It's really noticeable, too, because we have such a heterogeneous forest and landscape in terms of species, whereas when I've been to North America in particular, it’s all quite homogeneous, because the last Ice Age had a huge impact in the Northern Hemisphere. It really reduced the species enormously, especially in Europe. Our forests didn't experience that impact from the Last Ice Age. The only exception was around the Snowy Mountains and parts of Tasmania.
One of the unique aspects of our flora that I do mention in the book, which Wilson picked up straight away, is that eucalypts often turn their thin side to the sun to reduce photosynthesis and the impact of the light. This is interesting because if they evolved in Antarctica, they might not have needed that much light, and one of the Eucalypt specialists at Melbourne University was saying to me that eucalypts photosynthesise best at low light. So that is sort of an indicator of where they evolved – Antarctica. Wilson thought that this movement of the eucalypts and also their colour was completely different to anything he’d seen.
Many botanists who come to Australia from overseas, including Wilson, admit to not recognising anything at all. The only plants that Wilson felt he could recognise were those similar to the Proteas from Southern Africa and a few other species as well. He was really astounded, as if on another planet, and this is why it was so important that he was travelling with very knowledgeable Australian botanists wherever he went, because without them, he wouldn't have had any idea of what he was looking at.
Jess: On his journey through the Wheatbelt, Wilson raised his concerns about the extensive land clearing that was occurring. What impact did this land clearing have on the environment?
Margaret: Well, there's been a huge amount written about the problems of salinisation in the wheatbelt, and in some areas, there is only 3% vegetation left. We kept on clearing for another 60 years from the time Wilson was in the Wheatbelt, until about 1980, and clearing still goes on as people widen roads and such. Clearing is an issue because the trees keep the groundwater low, and the groundwater has a lot of very old salt in it. When the trees are removed, the groundwater rises, and it causes huge salinisation problems. This is a well-known and researched issue.
Wilson was concerned about this clearing. They were clearing huge areas of big trees, in particular, removing salmon gum. He was really concerned to see salmon gums being removed, because it is also a gorgeous tree, and he had a sense of foreboding about what was being done, and that nature would get its revenge. Which it has.
People who live in the wheatbelt can be sensitive about this issue, and there are quite a lot of farmers who are now revegetating, but the salt is rising, and it's claiming a lot of land.
Jess: What do you hope readers will get out of this book?
Margaret: I can't predict what impact the book will have, but I do think perhaps that people might read it and think, well, that was 1920, and this clearing and such is still happening. Have we really changed our attitude? We've got greening for our suburbs and cities have greening ambitions, but is it really seeping into the ordinary person? And are we educating our children? Because we don't really learn much at school about our local environment and about the species, and I think it's a really serious problem in our education. So, it's about valuing the environment.
I do hope perhaps that people will go and have a look at some of these places, particularly in the west and the Great Western Woodlands. I'm sure a lot of people are completely unaware of these beautiful trees. For example, they might think of Kalgoorlie as arid with hardly any trees and not think of anything else that might be around it. But just outside of Kalgoorlie, there’s fabulous landscape and trees – the Great Western Woodland is the largest temperate woodland in the world. There is more to Kalgoorlie than mining. A lot of Australians will fly to Bali or anywhere else in the world, and they don't go inland in their own country. One of the things I'd love people to know is that out in the WA Wheatbelt, for example, there are some fantastic places to go, with wonderful rocks, and you're the only person there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Grose grew up in the dunes and bush of coastal Perth. She studied agricultural science at the University of Western Australia, followed by a PhD in the ecophysiology of banksias. After working in Sydney, Oxford, and Cambridge, she returned and studied landscape architecture. She teaches ecology and design at the University of Melbourne but moves between Melbourne and south-west Australia. Her book Constructed Ecologies: Critical Reflections on Ecology with Design was published in 2017. Plant Collecting in Another Planet grew from a Sargent Award from Harvard University and reflects her deep connections with Australian landscapes.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Jess Burns is an upcoming graduate of Curtin University, completing a Bachelor of Arts double majoring in Professional Writing and Publishing, and English and Cultural Studies.