Plant Collecting in Another Planet, E H Wilson in Australia 1920-21 by Margaret J Grose, UWA Publishing 2025
Ernest Wilson is best known for his plant collecting expeditions in China and the Far East between 1899 and 1910. He shipped back to England seeds, bulbs, corms and rhizomes of hundreds of species, as well as herbarium specimens. His travels took him to the most remote valleys in Asia. Later he collected for the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and became well known as ‘Chinese’ Wilson.
This book is about his travels in Australia in 1920. He was sent to ‘take a census of the world’s trees’. Although he did collect some herbarium specimens for Harvard, his primary purpose was research and the opportunity to forge links between botanists in both continents.
Wilson was a keen observer and was particularly interested in the differences between the West Australian flora and that of the northern hemisphere. He wrote ‘it might well be part of another planet so utterly different is the whole aspect of its vegetation’. He was appalled by the widespread destruction of trees for farming, firewood and construction and thought that a lot of the land would never grow anything as good as trees.
Although he travelled to the eastern states, most of this book is concerned with Wilson’s travels in Western Australia, which the author has meticulously recorded. She has also included photos of his herbarium specimens in Harvard as well as in Australia. Photographs of the period are well referenced, although many of these are of poor quality.
This is an account of previously neglected travels by E H Wilson. It has been carefully researched, and the data is presented in clear, minute detail. Its very specialised scope will appeal primarily to those historians, as well as botanists and conservationists, interested in the status of Australian flora in the 1920s.