The perpendicular arms of the humble backyard rotary clothesline have provided the inspiration for a newly named species of Australian bloodroot.<\/p>\n
The native plant has been named Haemodorum collevatum, drawing on the Latin words “collis”, meaning hills, and “levatum”, to lift up (or, in this case, hoist).<\/p>\n
The field of taxonomy sometimes look to popular figures, such as David Attenborough or a Star Wars character, when choosing scientific and common names for new species of plant or animal.<\/p>\n
Other times, a name stems from a defining characteristic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The “Hills hoist” clothesline bloodroot is named because of its branches splaying nearly 90 degrees from its stalk. (Supplied: Botanic Gardens of Sydney)<\/p>\n
For systematic botanist Russell Barrett, from the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, it was the tall centre flower and unusual branches of the bloodroot that stood out.<\/p>\n
“The majority of these bloodroots have quite slender flower stalks clustered together,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So the fact this one had long spreading branches and branches that came out at right angles is unusual in the genus.<\/p>\n
“In looking through our field photos [of the plant] \u2026 some of the photos really looked like a Hills hoist.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The rotary clothesline was popularised after World War II by the design known as the Hills hoist. (ABC News: Aneeta Bhole)<\/p>\n
One plant becomes four<\/p>\n
Dr Barrett named the species with the Western Australian Herbarium’s Terry Macfarlane in the journal Nuytsia<\/a>.<\/p>\n The clothesline species is found around Sydney and Newcastle and is believed to be fairly common.<\/p>\n The flower of the clothesline bloodroot has dark brownish petals. The open flowers are in fruit. (Supplied: Botanic Gardens of Sydney)<\/p>\n Bloodroots belong to the plant family Haemodoraceae, which also include kangaroo paw plants.<\/p>\n University of Western Australia conservation biologist Stephen Hopper, who studies the plant family, said the two scientists had done some good detective work to identify the bloodroot.<\/p>\n “They thought it was one undescribed species on the east coast and they turned up three,” he said.<\/p>\n The clothesline bloodroot and two other newly named NSW species were originally thought to be the one species, Haemodorum planifolium, but are actually four separate organisms.<\/p>\n Their identification takes the number of known bloodroot species up to 36 plants, which are found mostly in Australia but also Papua New Guinea. These species are in a separate family to the North American plant Sanguinaria canadensis which is also commonly called bloodroot.<\/p>\n The virtuous kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos viridis sophrosyne) is one of several new additions to the Haemodoraceae family. (Supplied: Stephen Hopper)<\/p>\n Professor Hopper recently completed an update of the overarching Haemodoraceae family<\/a> and found it contained more than 100 species that spread as far as South Africa and the Americas.<\/p>\n The update takes the number of known species of kangaroo paws, a common flower found in gardens around Australia but endemic to southwest Western Australia, up to 16.<\/p>\n “To me the exciting thing is kangaroo paws are a pretty well-known group of plants but we’re still turning up new ones as recently as three years ago,” Professor Hopper said.<\/p>\n What are bloodroots exactly?<\/p>\n Bloodroots are named for their underground tubers, which can vary in colour from orange to deep red.<\/p>\n The native perennials have long stems which can shoot up to over a metre tall.<\/p>\n Species found in northern Australia have more colourful flowers including bright reds and attract a wide vary of pollinators.<\/p>\n But more southern species in WA and NSW have dark brown or black coloured petals that exclude most insects and birds, except for a pair of unique bees.<\/p>\n Two years ago, different species of native bees were found to be key pollinators<\/a> of bloodroots in the west and in the east. \u00a0<\/p>\n Two species of bees, one on the east coast and the other on the west coast, were identified two years ago as specialised pollinators of southern bloodroots. (iNaturalist: Kate Brown<\/a>, Leioproctus haemodori<\/a>, CC BY-NC 4.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n “These bees are strong little buggers specialised in prizing apart the petals and the sepals to get into the flower to the nectar,” Professor Hopper said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Even [European] honey bees can’t get the nectar in these things.”<\/p>\n Bloodroots are a culturally important food<\/p>\n The tubers of bloodroots have an array of uses in First Nations cultures around Australia.<\/p>\n Bloodroot species that grow in northern Australia are used in practices as a dye in, for instance, basket making.<\/p>\n In the southwest of WA, the tubers are a valued food source.<\/p>\n Dale Tilbrook has seen a growing use of bloodroot by restaurants and distilleries. (ABC News: Rebecca Turner)<\/p>\n Wardandi Bibbulmun woman and cultural tours operator Dale Tilbrook, whose family’s country is in the Busselton region, said the bulb could be eaten raw or pounded into a paste.<\/p>\n “Over the past few years, a lot of chefs and distillers have used bloodroot,” she said.<\/p>\n “It comes out as this beautiful red oil that has this lovely hot flavour, so it’s nice as a spicy garnish.”<\/p>\n Ms Tilbrook said the spice level depended where the plant grew.<\/p>\n Around Perth, where the plant is called bohn, it is a bit spicy; near Collie it’s called mardja and is a little hotter; and Albany, where the plant is known as meen, it is very hot.<\/p>\n Lynette Knapp describes meen as a culturally significant plant in Albany. (ABC Great Southern: Lauren Smith)<\/p>\n Merningar Barduk Elder Lynette Knapp from Albany said meen was a very significant plant.<\/p>\n She said when people ate it, the juices would run from their mouths and colour their faces red.<\/p>\n “It looks a bit like beetroot, but not as tasty as beetroot,” Ms Knapp said.<\/p>\n “If it’s flowering, we just leave it until it grows some meen, some decent bloodroot we can eat.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The perpendicular arms of the humble backyard rotary clothesline have provided the inspiration for a newly named species…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,178448,65239,178446,178441,178443,178447,44,14160,178440,178439,178444,178445,178442],"class_list":{"0":"post-315749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bloodroot","11":"tag-botany","12":"tag-can-you-eat-bloodroot","13":"tag-clothesline-bloodroot","14":"tag-hills-hoist-clothesline-bloodroot","15":"tag-how-do-you-cook-bloodroot","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-plants","18":"tag-what-are-bloodroots","19":"tag-what-is-a-bloodroot","20":"tag-what-is-a-hills-hoist","21":"tag-what-is-a-rotary-clothesline","22":"tag-whats-a-clothesline-bloodroot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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