Second visit to the Territory by Professor Pryor of the Department of Botany ANU

Above: Single node cutting from coppice. Right: Multinode cutting from epicormic growth. Both were the same age after striking in vermiculite and sand under mist, with hormone assistance. The less vigorous rooting in the cutting from an epicormic shoot may have been because of the older ontogenetic age of the bud strands 2 m up the trunk. (Both near natural size.)

Second visit to the Territory by Professor Pryor of the Department of Botany ANU

On Thursday 8 August 1968, Professor Lindsay Pryor returned to Keravat after having transited Port Moresby and Lae on the previous day and spending the night in Rabaul. On this trip he was funded by the Department of Forests with the aim of visiting and reporting on as many of the accessible natural populations of E. deglupta as possible. I was assigned to accompany him for his time in the Territory.

Most of Thursday and the Friday morning were spent on the banks of the Keravat and Vudal Rivers. In some places wading in the shallows was necessary to collect botanical specimens from a number of different sites. Lindsay and I spent Friday afternoon at the Regional Office in Rabaul for the collection of air tickets and to finalize air bookings and air charters and to collect accommodation warrants for the remainder of the Professor’s travel in the Territory. The Professor spent the night in Rabaul while I returned to Keravat.

The next day Saturday 10 August I collected Lindsay from his hotel in Rabaul and drove him to Keravat where more specimens and photographs were obtained and herbarium material placed in plant presses for drying. Several duplicate specimens were collected destined for the Gauba Herbarium in the Department of Botany ANU and the Herbarium in Lae, and through the latter to selected overseas herbaria.

Left: E. deglupta specimen collected from Site 2 Keravat by “L Pryor and J Davidson” and later shown here as deposited in the Herbarium at Lae.

Specimen of E. deglupta collected from Site 2 of the “L Pryor and J Davidson” survey at Cape Hoskins on 11 August 1968, seen later mounted and deposited in the Lae Herbarium. Duplicates were sent to several overseas herbaria. Professor Pryor took a set of specimens back to Canberra for depositing in the Gauba Herbarium of the Department of Botany at the ANU.

Professor Pryor, Gloria and I travelled in to Rabaul in the evening. We took Lindsay out to dinner at one of Rabaul’s Chinese restaurants, then returned to Keravat while Lindsay spent the night in Rabaul.

On Sunday 11 August, I travelled in to Rabaul to join Lindsay at the airport to board a charter flight to Cape Hoskins. On the way the flight was directed over several natural stands of E. deglupta on the Toriu, Asrogi and Sai Rivers in the Open Bay Timber Area for Lindsay to see how the species typically occurred in the landscape (see next page). In the Hoskins area, a number of sites was visited including at Dami and numerous herbarium samples were collected. On 12 August Lindsay and I flew from Cape Hoskins to Lae on a charter, then on a scheduled flight to Goroka.

Lindsay Pryor and I flew over several stands of E. deglupta on the Toriu, Asrogi and Sai Rivers on our way from Rabaul to Cape Hoskins in a chartered aircraft, 11 August 1968.

Left: Flying into the Highlands in a DC3 aircraft in 1968. View forward out of the cockpit windows. If the weather became too severe for continuing to fly safely, common practice of the time was to land at the nearest suitable airstrip and for everyone to get out and stand around under the wing of the aircraft until the weather cleared enough to continue on!

Over Goroka in a TAA DC3, while coming in to land on 12 August 1968. Some of the tall street trees in the centre and left side of the photograph at the time were E. deglupta.

On 13 August, and Lindsay and I first turned our attention to an investigation of the E deglupta trees that had been planted along some of the streets in Goroka. We then moved on to the Sing-Sing Grounds in Kerowagi to see, and collect specimens from, the relatively large trees that were growing there.

Several commentators had remarked on these trees of E. deglupta as probably carried in from the north coast as seedlings for trade by visiting tribes in ancient times.25

25 This idea was not supported by the morphological evidence gathered by Lindsay and I on this trip. The morphological affinities were with E. deglupta growing in the Jimmi Valley and other highland valleys, and those in turn with the inland trees visited in Pagei and Ossima further to the west. There is no evidence that the species in the past ever occurred naturally on most of the north coast of the mainland. Also it is doubtful that any seedlings would have been carried in from the north coast as trade goods since the highlanders did not interact peacefully with the coastal lowlanders there, according to historical accounts.

E. deglupta street trees in Goroka in August 1968.

E. deglupta at the Sing-Sing Grounds in Kerowagi in 1968. Other trees present included casuarinas and pines.

14 and 15 August were spent travelling by road and bush tracks between Goroka and Mount Hagen to inspect streamside E. deglupta, particularly in the Jimmi River Valley, and in the areas photographed by R G Vial. Collections had been made previously by J S Womersley April 1951 from Nondugl, L J Brass 29 July 1959 from east slopes of Mt Wilhelm, A N Millar 3 February 1964 from Keglsugl (in “moss forest”), and L K Wade 21 October 1966 from Gembogl. Highland streams are high-energy streams compared with the rivers of New Britain. Also their beds comprise relatively large rocks and stones and coarse sandy sediments compared to the fine, mainly pumice-based sediments in New Britain. When in flood the boulders hurtling along in the fast flowing water cause considerable damage to regenerating seedlings and saplings of E. deglupta. At these elevations (up to 2,000 m) the adjacent forest comprised various mixtures of Casuarina, Nothofagus, Castanopsis, Podocarpus, Dacrycarpus, Papuacedrus and Libocedrus. This kind of forest was similar to the Conifer-Nothofagus forest that P van Royen described in the Mt Nettoti region of the Vogelkop Peninsula, Netherlands New Guinea (now West Papua, Indonesia) during his collection of E. deglupta on 30 November 1961.

Specimens of E. deglupta collected from the Sing-Sing Grounds at Kerowagi. Left: One of my specimens for the Herbarium in Lae. Right: Professor Pryor’s specimen lodged in the Gauba Herbarium, Department of Botany, ANU.

Travelling anywhere off the main track to visit the highlands streams to inspect occurrences of E. deglupta was fraught with difficulty if one wanted to use a vehicle instead of walking to save time, as Lindsay and I found on several occasions!

The typical scattered occurrence of E. deglupta in the highland river valleys is shown here on the left and on the next page. Highland streams are high-energy streams compared with the rivers of New Britain. Also their beds comprise relatively large rocks and stones and coarse sandy sediments compared to the fine, mainly pumice-based sediments in New Britain. When in flood the boulders hurtling along in the fast flowing water cause considerable damage to regenerating seedlings and saplings of E. deglupta (right hand photograph). So only a few survive to be quickly overcome by the other streamside vegetation.

At elevations of 1,800 to 2,000 m, the adjacent forest comprised various mixtures of Casuarina, Nothofagus, Castanopsis, Podocarpus, Dacrycarpus, Papuacedrus and Libocedrus that compete with the few E. deglupta that reach sapling and tree size. There were no bands of streamside regeneration of a number of age cohorts comprising pure E. deglupta as typically found next to the rivers on New Britain. Seed and botanical specimens are being collected here. The locations shown here were near the origin of the Mingende seedlots used in the early provenance trials of E. deglupta.

On 17 August Lindsay and I flew out of Mount Hagen for Lae, then from Lae to Vanimo. Sunday 18 August was a rest day spent in Vanimo. There we were able to gain access to drafts of some of the then recent (July 1968) work done by CSIRO during a land resources survey of the Vanimo area26, which included areas around Pagei and Ossima that were on the schedule to be visited. We learned that, on the proposed Pual Land System in the upper reaches of the Puwani and Bewani Rivers, Casuarina cunninghamia – E. deglupta forest, or its seral stages in which Casuarina became more dominant, was to be found. The largest trees were less than 5 ft (1.5 m) girth but still up to 100 ft (30 m) tall.

26 Much later published as: Löffler E, Haantjens H A, Heyligers P C, Saunders J C and Short K 1972 Land Resources of the Vanimo Area, Papua New Guinea, Land Research Series No. 31, CSIRO, Australia.

On Monday 19 Lindsay and I, accompanied by Peter Britton of Vanimo Timbers, boarded an aircraft chartered by the Department of Forests at Vanimo airport. This was a single-engined Cessna and I was surprised when the pilot in the left hand front seat invited Lindsay seated in the right hand front seat to take us off and set course on the way to Pagei airstrip (575 ft (175 m) elevation). The takeoff was quite expertly performed. (I was not aware until then that Lindsay had a private pilot’s licence and regularly flew this model of Cessna in Australia!27) The weather was clear and one could see into the headwater valleys of several Sepik River tributaries en route.

At Pagei, specimens of E. deglupta were collected from a streamside location near the airstrip.

Left: One of my specimens from Pagei deposited in the Herbarium in Lae.

27 “Lindsay founded the school of ‘Aviation Botany’ so that he could check critical species in his classification in person - the more remote a species occurred, the more critical it was for personal observation! During long flights to Central and Northern Australia, Lindsay developed a love for flying, taking over manual control at all opportunities without the help of the autopilot or his co-pilot, usually Dugald Paton, who enjoyed the accompanying commentary on the eucalypt species below. The Professor revelled in the challenge of keeping on track with all instruments “spot on”, using the same attention to detail that he brought to bear in his classification and other publications. His sense of purpose is illustrated through achievement of his unrestricted pilot’s licence when he was in his mid 50’s. On occasions, Lindsay persuaded his wife Wilma to accompany him on such field trips, and taught her how to hold the plane level and straight while he attended to the navigation chores. Wilma’s recurrent nightmare was the Lindsay would succumb to a stroke and she would be left holding the plane level and straight until it eventually ran out of fuel. Lindsay’s temperament exhibited itself on occasions when flying through rough weather, a glint would come into his eyes, but rarely did he indulge in rough words. His composure under trying conditions was the same as he displayed with verbal turbulence at taxonomy meetings.” Source: Quoted from the Inaugural Lindsay Pryor Memorial Lecture address by Allan Hawke, Chancellor of the Australian National University, Coombs Lecture Theatre, ANU, 26 September 2006.

Right: Young E. deglupta adjacent to the school grounds at Ossima. On the left in dark shorts is Peter Britton. On his right is the schoolmaster, with a number of curious school pupils.

The survey party then flew the short distance to land at Ossima airstrip (275 ft (85m) elevation). From there it was a short walk to the local school ground to inspect some adjacent E. deglupta saplings on the bank of a stream. These trees were said to have grown as natural regeneration. The species was reported growing some distance upstream but there was not time to walk to inspect this, and it was not obvious from the air on the flight out towards Vanimo. Before the specimens obtained on this visit, there was only the example collected by C D Sayers from “Ossima Village” in 1964 and located in the Herbarium in Lae.