Missouri Botanical Garden The Climatron® geodesic domed conservatory houses a thriving tropical rain forest at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Photo by Ian Adams, courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden.

(ST. LOUIS): The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew), the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), have announced plans to develop the World Flora—the first modern, online catalog of the world’s plants—to be made available by the year 2020.

This massive undertaking will include the compilation of information on up to 400,000 plant species worldwide. It will also achieve a primary target of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, an ambitious effort first adopted by the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity in 2002, to halt the continuing loss of plant biodiversity around the globe.

Representatives of the four botanical gardens recently met to organize a framework to guide their efforts and respond to this need for a baseline survey on the plants of the world that has been called for by the international community. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) detailing plans to create the World Flora was recently signed into effect by the four institutions.

Plants are one of Earth’s greatest resources. They are sources of food, medicines and materials with vast economic and cultural importance. They stabilize ecosystems and form the habitats that sustain the planet’s animal life. They are also threatened by climate change, environmental factors and human interaction.

There are an estimated 400,000 species of vascular plants on Earth, with some 10 percent more yet to be discovered. These plants, both known and unknown may hold answers to some of the world’s health, social and economic problems. A full inventory of plant life is vital if their full potential is to be realized before many of these species, and the possibilities they offer, become extinct.

The critical situation for plants, where at least 100,000 plant species are threatened by extinction worldwide, has been recognized by the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In 2002, a Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) was developed and adopted by the Convention.

In 2004, a Global Partnership for Plant Conservation (GPPC) was formed, involving leading environmental, conservation and botanical organizations who came together to support the achievement of the GSPC. The four botanical gardens involved in this new project are all members of the GPPC.

“An online Flora of all known plants” is the first of the GSPC’s targets for the period 2011-20201. Earlier work by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Missouri Botanical Garden addressed one of the GSPC’s earlier targets for 2010 with the launch of The Plant List, an online portal containing the accepted names and synonyms of all known plant species. The forthcoming Flora will use The Plant List as a building block for something much more detailed, containing not just names but also descriptions, images and distribution information about every plant.

The team tackling the World Flora will build a collaborative partnership for this work worldwide and create a structure and program able to incorporate data from institutions and individuals all over the world. In some cases, existing electronic data sets will be combined and augmented with the results of botanical research published over more than a century around the world. Much historic information will require a thorough review and update, along with a conversion to an electronic medium. As new plants are subsequently collected, named and described, they too will be added to the World Flora.

“We look forward to working with institutions worldwide to produce a sustainable resource to aid conservation globally, regionally and nationally,” said Hopper.

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compost bins

Much of the language has changed but not the principles.  If one was to devote and indeed preserve an environment through permaculture — a framework for a sustainable agricultural system, devised by Aussies, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, you would discover a simple rule, harmony with nature.  Modern term, sustainability.

It all sounded so posh until you had a closer look.  Everything had a use, old newspapers to cover bare soil and repress weeds, old tyres to make ponds to grow water chestnuts and fish.  The fish ate the mosquitos and the water chestnuts became a novelty for friends and family.  “Ever tried water chestnuts, so crunchy.  Ere try one.”

A compost bin, made from junk found around the garden, filled with old leather boots and dead ducks.  A collection of chickens, looking like models on a cat walk stepping daintily, or not, through the garden, and leaving behind mounds of nutrition.

Permaculture had our gardens resembling barnyards, and, it didn’t take off, except in small communities, where hippies lived.  Some people had no room to raise chickens and even less desire to chuck dead ones in the compost. Not all of us had spare tyres, except, perhaps, around our waist.

But us hippies embraced the principles and by stealth we introduced the concept into many gardens under the guise of landscape design.  Through my own business Bush Design I placed layer upon layer of old wet newspaper over impoverished weed ridden soil, then covered that with trailer loads of manure and then concealed it all with modern, acceptable pine bark.

I dug large round holes for the tyre ponds and then concealed the edges with large beautiful stones.  I drew plans that included native plants and never called them that.  I just showed clients pictures and spurted latin names.

The plans failed to include areas for lawns.  “Where is the lawn?”  Lawns are old hat.  They waste water, use fossil fuel to maintain and take space away from growing food.  But where will the children play?  They can play in the park or on a sports field or better still they can wind their way through paths of thickly planted rainforest and explore nature and nature’s creatures, all in their own backyard.

Do you want me to allow room for a compost heap?  It’s a system of reducing waste.  After all when you mow that acre of lawn you insisted on planting where will you put the grass clippings?  Oh to the dump, of course.  I was so happy when the plastic compost tumbler was invented.  Look how nice they look and so easy to use.  Everyone’s got one.

I changed irrigation systems from wasteful sprays to trickle systems that delivered the water right where it was needed, at the plants roots.  I mounded up beds to improve drainage and created basins around the plants to capture precious rainwater.   I researched plants that grew well in alkaline soils after one client brought in soil from a supplier that was so sweet it killed everything she planted.

Permaculture has already celebrated one jubilee, thanks to a couple of green visionaries that never gave up, even when their ideas were considered radical and a whole lot of cunning from eager conservationists.

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A honeybee foraging on scorpion weed flowers. This image relates to the paper by Dr. Henry and colleagues. [Image © Science/AAAS

A pair of new studies reveals the multiple ways that a widely used insecticide harms bumblebees and honeybees.

The reports, one by a U.K. team and one by a French team, appear online at the Science Express Web site of the journal Science, on 29 March, 2012. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit, international science society.

Bumblebees and honeybees are important pollinators of flowering plants, including many major fruit and vegetable crops. Each year, for example, honeybee hives are trucked in to help pollinate almond, apple and blueberry crops, among others.

In recent years, honeybee populations have rapidly declined, in part due to a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Bumble bee populations have been suffering as well, according to Dave Goulson of the University of Stirling in Stirling, U.K., who is a co-author of one of the studies.

“Some bumblebee species have declined hugely. For example in North America, several bumblebee species which used to be common have more or less disappeared from the entire continent. In the U.K., three species have gone extinct,” Goulson said.

Researchers have proposed multiple causes for these declines, including pesticides, but it’s been unclear exactly how pesticides are inflicting their damage.

Both of the Science studies looked at the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides, which were introduced in the early 1990s and have now become one of the most widely used crop pesticides in the world. These compounds act on the insect’s central nervous system, and they spread to the nectar and pollen of flowering crops.

In one study, Penelope Whitehorn of the University of Stirling in Stirling, U.K. and colleagues exposed developing colonies of bumblebees, Bombus terrestris, to low levels of a neonicotinoid called imidacloprid. The doses were comparable to what the bees are often exposed to in the wild.

The researchers then placed the colonies in an enclosed field site where the bees could forage under natural conditions for six weeks. At the beginning and end of the experiment, the researchers weighed each of the bumblebee nests – which included the bees, wax, honey, bee grubs and pollen – to determine how much the colony had grown.

Compared to control colonies that had not been exposed to imidacloprid, the treated colonies gained less weight, suggesting less food was coming in. The treated colonies were on average eight to 12 percent smaller than the control colonies at the end of the experiment. The treated colonies also produced about 85 percent fewer queens. This last finding is particularly important because queen production translates directly to the establishment of new nests following the winter die-off. Thus, 85 percent fewer queens could mean 85 percent fewer nests in the coming year.

“Bumblebees pollinate many of our crops and wild flowers. The use of neonicotinoid pesticides on flowering crops clearly poses a threat to their health, and urgently needs to be re-evaluated,” said Goulson.

In the other Science report, a French team found that exposure to another neonicotinoid pesticide impairs honey bees’ homing abilities, causing many of the bees to die.

Mickaël Henry of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in Avignon, France and colleagues tagged free-ranging honeybees with tiny radio-frequency identification, or “RFID,” microchips that were glued to each bee’s thorax. These devices allowed the researchers to track the bees as they came and went from their hives. The researchers then gave some of the bees a sublethal dose of the pesticide thiamethoxam.

Compared to control bees that were not exposed to the pesticide, the treated bees were about two to three times more likely to die while away from their nests. These deaths probably occurred because the pesticide interfered with the bees’ homing systems, the researchers propose. In the second part of their study, the researchers used data from the tracking experiment to develop a mathematical model that simulated honeybee population dynamics. When the mortality caused by the homing failure was incorporated into the simulations, the model predicted that honeybee populations exposed to this pesticide should drop to a point from which it would be difficult to recover.

The authors note that even though manufacturers are required to ensure their pesticide doses remain below lethal levels for honeybees, the studies used to determine this lethality level have probably underestimated the ways that pesticides can kill bees indirectly, for example by interfering with their homing systems.

“Our study raises important issues regarding pesticide authorization procedures. So far, they mostly require manufacturers to ensure that doses encountered on the field do not kill bees, but they basically ignore the consequences of doses that do not kill them but may cause behavioral difficulties,” said study author Mikaël Henry of INRA, in Avignon, France.

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Durum wheat in farmers hands

Picture card landscapes in some areas of Australia have been replaced by a barrenness dotted with outlines of skeletonised trees — a ravaged legacy of what has been coined the white death, an aftermath of rising salt from the parched earth.

These saline soils are toxic to vegetation. Just as a high sodium diet can be damaging to humans, plants are also reactive to the buildup of salts. The prognosis is necrosis and death.

In the wheat-growing areas of Australia many kilometers of soil are affected by salinity and as the world’s second-largest wheat exporter, in addition to the destructive impact on the countryside, it also has an impact on the farmers’ livelihood.

It is estimated that salinity affects 20% of the worlds’ agricultural soils. Add to this equation: climate change, predicted to bring further increases, and we could be looking at a devastating effect, which will reduce once swelling, productive farmlands. We risk a future where food production becomes a battle against time.

Throughout history plant breeders, now coined plant geneticists, have increased crop yields through conventional breeding programs. The work of Mendel was instrumental to the theory of plant breeding and wheat — a worldwide staple — has been, at times, miraculously altered through intensive breeding.

However, domestication and breeding has narrowed the gene pool of modern wheat, leaving it susceptible to environmental stress. Durum wheat, used for making pasta and couscous, is particularly susceptible to soil salinity

This era of plant breeding, that produced the green revolution, is almost entirely over, but a recent outcome has reaped benefits for a team of Australian researchers when about 15 years ago they discovered a variety of wheat with a salt tolerance.

The originator of the salt-tolerant gene (known as TmHKT1;5-A) was an ancient wheat plant Triticum monococcum. This species was crossed with a modern durum wheat, and then began the lengthy process of backcrossing and inbreeding to produce a stable cultivar. This work was carried out by a team led by Rana Munns and Richard James at CSIRO Plant Industry.

Dr Matthew Giliham from the University’s Waite Research Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology and one of the main researchers involved in the study said it is the first discovery for salt tolerance in durum wheat.

“It is also the first research in the world to describe the improvement in salt tolerance of an agricultural crop – from understanding the function of the salt-tolerant genes in the lab, to demonstrating increased grain yields in the field.”

Under standard field conditions, the wheat containing the salt-tolerance gene performed the same as durum that did not have the gene. But under salty field conditions, it outperformed its durum wheat parent, with increased yields of up to 25%.

For farmers who have paddocks with some salinity this is a bonus because it means they can just sow one seed. Because the wheat is a progeny of conventional breeding there are no restrictions on its use.

The researchers have now crossed the salt-tolerance gene into bread wheat, which is being field-tested.

Gilliham is convinced that modern GM technologies will speed up the plant breeding process saying,

“Now we know the gene involved in this process we can look for similar genes in other crops species or transfer this gene to other plants to improve their salt tolerance.

‘Many advantageous traits and tolerances are encoded by multiple genes and via conventional breeding transferring all these multiple traits would be extremely difficult.”

He believes that given an exploding population, and a mantra for an increase in food production; up to 110% by 2050, and the development of plants that suit a rapidly changing climate –time is running out.

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Delicious eggplant casserole with tomato, lemon grass and chilli.

Ingredients;
2 tsp peanut oil
1 clove garlic – finely chopped
2 tomatoes, quartered. Remove seeds and pulp
1 lemongrass finely chopped (keep stalk)
1 Spring onion cut into 3 cm pieces
2 Eggplants (long and thin) cut into 4cm and long x 1cm wide pieces
1 red chilli cut into thin strips
1 and 1/2 tbs of fish sauce
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 pinch of turmeric
1 tsp of pepper
Basil, coriander, spring onion and chilli to garnish

Method
Put medium sized clay pot on heat, add 2 tsp of oil and stir in garlic until fragrant.
Add tomato and lemongrass to the pot (not lemongrass stalk)
Add 2 tbs of water and stgir
Allow mixture to simmer for approx 2 minutes
Add fish sauce and sugar – mix well.
Add eggplant
Pour in a cupped of water
Add another 1/2 tsp of fish sauce and sugar – mix well
Add the turmeric, pepper and lemongrass stalk
Allow mixture ot simmer for approximately 7 minutes until eggplant tender
Discard lemon grass stalk.
Garnish with basil, coriander, spring onion and chilli

Serve with steamed coconut rice. I also add bean sprouts, for that added crunch.

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Aromatherapy

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is one of many traditional medicinal plants that yield essential oils. But exactly how such plants affect human behaviour is still unclear. Mark Moss and Lorraine Oliver, working at the Brain, Performance and Nutrition Research Centre at Northumbria University, UK designed an experiment to investigate the pharmacology of 1,8-cineole (1,3,3-trimethyl-2-oxabicyclo[2,2,2]octane), one of rosemary’s main chemical components.

The investigators tested cognitive performance and mood in a cohort of 20 subjects, who were exposed to varying levels of the rosemary aroma. Using blood samples to detect the amount of 1,8-cineole participants had absorbed, the researchers applied speed and accuracy tests, and mood assessments, to judge the rosemary oil’s affects.

Results indicate for the first time in human subjects that concentration of 1,8-cineole in the blood is related to an individual’s cognitive performance – with higher concentrations resulting in improved performance. Both speed and accuracy were improved, suggesting that the relationship is not describing a speed–accuracy trade off.

Meanwhile, although less pronounced, the chemical also had an effect on mood. However, this was a negative correlation between changes in contentment levels and blood levels of 1,8-cineole, which is particularly interesting because it suggests that compounds given off by the rosemary essential oil affect subjective state and cognitive performance through different neurochemical pathways. The oil did not appear to improve attention or alertness, however.
Terpenes like 1,8-cineole can enter the blood stream via the nasal or lung mucosa. As small, fat-soluble organic molecules, terpenes can easily cross the blood–brain barrier. Volatile 1,8-cineole is found in many aromatic plants, including eucalyptus, bay, wormwood and sage in addition to rosemary, and has already been the subject of a number of studies, including research that suggests it inhibits acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase enzymes, important in brain and central nervous system neurochemistry: rosemary components may prevent the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

“Only contentedness possessed a significant relationship with 1,8-cineole levels, and interestingly to some of the cognitive performance outcomes, leading to the intriguing proposal that positive mood can improve performance whereas aroused mood cannot,” said Moss.

Typically comprising 35-45% by volume of rosemary essential oil, 1,8-cineole may possess direct pharmacological properties. However, it is also possible that detected blood levels simply serve as a marker for relative levels of other active compounds present in rosemary oil, such as rosmarinic acid and ursolic acid, which are present at much lower concentrations.

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field of Sunflowers Roman Eder (Austria)

At the time the only oil available to make margarine was safflower. As Mr Lemon tells it in an interview with Queensland Country Life (25.5.2000) this crop doesn’t like wet feet and it’s “as prickly as hell”

Lemon had grown Polestar sunflowers in the past and had realised that, given full soil moisture replenishment after harvest his following winter cereal crop was always, “at least as good as, if not better than average.”

His theory was that the deep taproot of the sunflowers must have been “doing something.”

In the 60’s this was radical thinking and now farmers, particularly those in Central Queensland, routinely employ sunflower-wheat rotation.

In 1964 Lemon went on a fact-finding trip to Northern America. Here he found Eric Putt a Manitoba based researcher who had obtained promising sunflower germplasm from Russia. Lemon imported four new lines into Australia. After a stint in quarantine he began to grow the varieties, eventually discarding all the varieties, except one, Peredovik.

In 1968 he had enough seed, (almost 91 tonnes) and was able to provide the Queensland Graingrowers Association and Pacific Seeds for the 1969 season with growers producing the new high-oil line under contract for $95 a tonne.

The success story continued and now after his death the common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) that gave the Midas touch to Lemon has reaped intellectual rewards for his grandson, biologist Dr Joshua Mylne, a research scientist in the Chemistry and Structural Biology Division of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland.

Over ten years ago, scientists in the UK discovered a small protein ring (called SFTI-1) in sunflower seeds that blocks a common protein-digesting enzyme (protease) call trypsin. For the following ten years, drug designers have synthesized different versions of SFTI -1 to block a range of proteases of biomedical importance. Cancer tumours often excrete proteases to digest the flesh around it, creating space for the tumour to grow.

Dr Mylne has discovered how sunflowers make SFTI-1, and used the gene to make SFTI-1 in another plant called Arabidopsis thaliana, a small rosette weed like Shepherd’s purse known commonly as thale cress. This breakthrough has the potential to allow a natural, cheaper production method for new therapeutic drugs.

As drugs, peptides (proteins) suffer from the same digestive enzymes that break down our food proteins and generally are unstable in the human body with poor bioavailability. SFTI-1, however is stable because it’s cyclic and has a rigid structure. Unlike most proteins, it has no ends.

“For such a small protein it is surprisingly rigid. It doesn’t bend – structurally it’s like a rock.

“This and the fact that it has no ends make it hard for proteases to touch it,” says Dr. Mylne.

A second issue for protein drugs is the expense associated with producing them. Although drug designers only need to make very minute quantities of peptide to find the molecule they’re after, to take a drug to market one needs to make kilograms. Plants may offer a solution.

What Dr Mylne discovered was that SFTI-1 arises, by an unusual route. It is cut out from a much larger protein of a totally different function, called seed storage albumin. The job of albumin is to be broken down and built into new proteins as a seed germinates.

“So the seed is like a backpack full of all the nutrients and energy that the plant will use to establish itself before it can start photosynthesising and drawing its own nutrients through its root in the soil.”

This energy store is made up of starch and oil, while the store of nitrogen and sulphur are seed storage proteins, for which there are two types; albumins and globulins.

Seed storage proteins accumulate to a point where they can makeup sometimes as much as 40 to 50% of the entire weight of the seed and play no other role than to break down during germination.

“So the thing that’s kind of weird and what interested the journal (Nature Chemical Biology 20/3/11) was how this little peptide is tucked up and buried inside one of these albumins and then emerges using the same machinery that matures that albumin,” says Mylne.

“For a scientist that’s quite interesting the way that the machinery is being coerced to produce something that it wouldn’t normally do and in the paper we say the albumin and its processing machinery are “hijacked.””

The ringed shaped of SFTI-1 and a new one they found called SFT-L1 are truly unique. However, now that their precursor genes have been identified they can be transferred in their natural state or modified into other plants.

The beauty of this cyclic peptide is that it can be extracted easily and cheaply, and without the use of large amounts of toxic chemicals.

Mylne says they should be able to change the DNA sequence of the SFTI-1 producing gene PawS1 to make the versions of SFTI-1 that drug designers create to block other the protein-cutting ability of other proteases.

There is already some work that has been done by Dr Jon Harris at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) who made three changes to the 14-letter sequence of the SFTI-1 and this new molecule stopped it blocking its normal targets and instead blocked a protease involved in prostrate cancer.

Proteases are a large percentage of every genome, including humans, but most of the time they are turned off. However in a tumour often one or several protease genes get turned on at the wrong time and this chewing into the surrounding flesh is part of what allows the tumour to grow.
So whenever someone is treating a cancer for example, they will often include a protease inhibitor as a part of the treatment.

In each tumour type, it is often a specific human protease that gets turned on by the tumour. For example breast cancer turns on an enzyme called matriptase whereas in prostrate cancer it’s often the protease KLK4.

“So the beauty of this sunflower protein is it is the perfect shape to block proteases and a great starting point for drug designers to tweak what it blocks, concludes Dr. Mylne.

The drug designer Prof David Craik and Dr Mylne recently won a $360,000 grant which will fund the development of this system for producing drugs.

“What we are working on now is trying to understand how much change PawS1 can tolerate and still make its protein ring.

“This will give us an idea of what sort of range of SFTI-based drugs we can make in plants,” said Mylne.

“So far the parts that control what enzymes gets blocked, which is the part we want to change seems to have good plasticity.

“That is, we seem to be able to change that part quite comfortably without any problems which is promising.”

And why do plants make this molecule?

“At the moment we are operating under the assumption it is for defence.

“When they get discovered, no matter what species they come from, most ring proteins protect the organism.

“We’re just trying to find some proof”

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Brugsmansia are targeted under the new illicit drug laws

The proposed amendment is a result of the Labour Government’s “Organised Crime Strategic Framework that hopes to target one of the primary markets of organised crime – the importation, domestic production and distribution of illicit drugs.”

In 1990, the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) established a committee to develop a national model criminal code for Australian jurisdictions, the Model Criminal Code Officers’ Committee (MCCOC)

After a name change to the Model Criminal Law Officers’ Committee (MCLOC) (‘the committee”) published a series of reports creating specific classes of model offences.

In 2002, Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments resolved at the Leaders Summit on Terrorism and Multi-jurisdictional Crime to implement the model offences recommended in the committee report.

The committee then needed to develop the model schedules to include in the code. It acknowledged that it did not have the expertise to do so and in February 2005, the Intergovernmental Committee on Drugs Scheduling Working Party on Controlled Substances (the Working Party) was born and embarked on the task of developing model schedules (that is, lists of substances to be classified as either controlled drugs, plants or precursors).

The Working Party was established under the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy and consisted of representatives from industry and relevant state and federal agencies. Who these agencies are has yet to be determined.

This working party put together a schedule of controlled precursors and another schedule of controlled plants.

Certain plants are already contained in the code as controlled drugs, including cannabis, Pappaver, Erythroxylum P. Browne and fungii containing Psilocin or Psilocybin but the amendments, will, according to the discussion paper include another 8 plants, however, as this article will show it actually may include many hundreds.

The proposed schedule II Part B reads as follows:

¥ Any plant containing mescaline including any plant of the genus Lophophora.
¥ Any plant containing DMT including any plant of the species Piptadenia peregrine (this plant has had a name change and is now Adenanthera peregrine).
¥ Salvia divinorum EPL. & Jativa (Diviners Sage)
¥ Mitragyna speciosa Korth (Krantom)
¥ Catha edulis Forsk (Khat)
¥ Any species of the genus Ephedra which contains ephedrine
¥ Any species of the genus Brugmansia Pers.
¥ Any species of the genus Datura L.

The second reference to any plant containing DMT refers to the compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine which is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. DMT is found in many plants including some Australian Acacia sp.

While the consultation paper does raise questions it seems to be mainly concerned with questions of legalities such as anomalies within the criminal code because it is divided into domestic offences and import/export offences.

There are also questions relating to the integration with Customs Regulations and about the classification of certain substances as drugs and precursors and their quantities.

It asks if an expanded list of plants is appropriate for use in relation to plant offences. What this actually means is not clear as the paper believes it is only banning an additional 8 plants but that is erroneous as the schedule states any plant containing DMT and any plant containing mescaline which expands the list of plants dramatically.

Raising the question of legitimate use for plants there is mention of protection for botanist and collectors, but no mention of nursery businesses growing the plants. The paper also mentions the protection for the growing of hemp for commercial production of fibre.

And finally it states: Does the model schedule of controlled plants create any problems of inadvertent criminalisation, particularly in relation to the offence of selling a controlled plant within Australia? To which there is a resounding ‘Yes’ from industry, industry operators and the public.

A group of ‘anonymous’ concerned gardeners, nursery operators and academics created a website to educate the community about the proposed schedule as they and others say the paper had not been widely publicised. It collected 2,510 submission in response. www.gardenfreedom.com

In Its own submission it opposed any further scheduling of plants saying that the plants that are of concern in regards to drug trafficking and organised crime are already scheduled and any further scheduling will only confuse matters, while criminalising normal behaviour of law abiding citizens.

Plant schedules should be carefully considered to weigh loss of freedom against community harm. The plants listed in the model schedules do not justify these losses of personal freedom.

Brugmansia and Datura should not be listed in the drug schedules as these are poisons not drugs and have been adequately dealt with in the relevant poisons legislation.

It also makes the point that plants should never be scheduled on the basis of their chemical content, but on the harm they cause, and only by botanical name. For example, Lophophora diffusa should not be illegal, as it does not contain mescaline, even if its relative Lophophora williamsii does.

Australian native plants should never be scheduled. Wattles (Acacia sp) should never be scheduled. [my italics] Cacti should not be scheduled as mescaline is already sufficiently controlled in existing legislation.

It continues by saying that the policy presented in the proposed plant schedules is poorly researched and to criminalise thousands of native and exotic plant species that are commonly used in Australian gardens, farms and forests, and that are the basis of horticultural and agricultural industries is careless and an insult to the citizens these laws would be imposed on.

The proposed schedules in regards to cacti would have a devastating impact on botanic gardens and private cactus collections.

According to Dr. Anthony Kachenko the environmental and technical policy manager with the Nursery & Garden Industry Australia (NGIA) it was not asked for its input into the proposed schedules and found out about the discussion paper inadvertently by a concerned grower.

As most readers know this is the peak body for the industry and as Mr Kachenko pointed out, it is very disappointing that it was not consulted especially due to the consequences to the nursery industry.

Indeed the Government recognises and makes mention of these possible costs or adverse impacts on industry, saying if the model schedules were to be implemented in Commonwealth legislation, these impacts would be identified and carefully considered.

It says that the completion of a preliminary assessment to establish the extent to which the proposal is likely to have an impact on business and individuals or the economy, would take place and if, after analysis, it is found to have such an impact, a more detailed analysis would be documented in a Regulation Impact Statement.

In its submission NGIA says it does not support the expanded list. It maintains that the plant schedules will have significant impact on nursery businesses, individuals in the wider Australian gardening public and the Australian economy.

It will also impact on other important sectors including landscape designers and contractors, parks and gardens personnel, indoor plant hire businesses, Landcare and Bushcare groups as well as botanists and plant collectors.

NGIA believes the paper has failed to detail any reasoning behind the perceived risk associated with cultivating, selling or possessing many of the plants listed and requests the provision of information to suggest otherwise.

Mr Kachenko calls the approach detailed in the discussion paper a “blanket ban” and is disappointed to see that taxa have not been identified and listed by their complete botanical names.

It also questions the availability of scientific data to determine a list of plants that contain mescaline and DMT.

Through its own research it determined that many Acacia sp contain DMT. Also multiple cacti taxa contained mescaline meaning that these species would become prohibited from cultivation and sale in production nurseries and garden centres across Australia.

NGIA also raises the question of why Brugmansia and Datura are on the list. The alkaloids contained in these plants, scopolamine and hyoscyamine are not listed as controlled drugs or precursors.

Mr Alistair Hay, a retired senior research scientist and a director of the Botanic Gardens and Public Programs with the Botanic Gardens Trust Sydney who has a doctorate in Botany and is the lead author of the book “The genus Brugmansia” says all parts of the plants Brugmansia and Datura contain tropane alkaloids, which are usually extracted from the leaves and green stems.

There was an industry for commercial extraction of medical scopolamine from Brugmansia in Ecuador, and Brugmansia was trialled in Queensland in the 1970s.

“Scopolamine is now extracted from the Australian Duboisia spp. which have higher yield and less virus problems, I believe,” said Mr Hays.

He points out that Duboisia, is not listed and neither are Atropa, Hyoscyamus, and Mandragora.

“So the inclusion of Brugmansia is even more incongruous.”

Mr Hay believes Brugmansia and Datura may have been listed in error under a false assumption that they contain DMT.

He said the National Drugs Campaign had these genera listed together with various other psychedelic substances.

“They removed them after I and others pointed out that they should not be grouped together as there is potential for dangerous poisoning to occur if (mainly male adolescents) think they should experiment,” he said.

But the potential for a drug industry to develop around Brugmansia and Datura is limited, Hay believes because the psychoactive effects are so unpleasant.

These plants are dealt with adequately under the Department of Health and Ageing Therapeutic Goods Administration Poisons Standard 2009 prepared under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989.

“What is outrageous about the new listing is that commercial growing of the plants (all of them) would become a serious crime, with no link between growing them and an illicit drug market being required to be demonstrated,” Hays said.

A spokeswoman for the Minister of Justice stated on 24 January 2011 that, “Implementing nationally consistent lists of illegal drugs and drug ingredients is important to stopping the drug trade across Australia.

“We recognise that some ingredients used for manufacturing illegal drugs are contained in commonly occurring plants.

“However, claims that backyard plants will be banned or their growers prosecuted are ridiculous.

The spokeswoman went on to say that the Commonwealth’s drug laws target people who are involved in the illicit drug trade and that will continue to be the case.

Most of the substances to be included on the new lists are already deemed to be illegal and have been for some time.”

Mr Hay disagrees saying, “The proposal itself identifies that plant collectors and botanists will be impacted by these laws, so obviously will anyone else who possesses these plants.

He said another spokesperson from the same department commented on the 25 January that: “…Under the proposed controlled plants in Schedule II of the model schedules, plants containing DMT or mescaline could be captured.”

The Garden Freedom group commented that when the spokespeople say it’s OK to grow a couple of prohibited plants to keep in mind the consequences of growing something, like marijuana, in your backyard.

“Under the new laws this will be exactly the same offence.”

I tried on numerous occasions to get a response from the Attorney General’s department and today (23rd March 11) I was contacted by Jayne Stinson the media adviser for The Hon Brendan O’Connor MP, Minister for Home Affairs and Justice Minister for Privacy and F.O.I. that outlined the Minister’s position on the matter.

That position is as follows:

Claims that backyard plants will be banned or their growers prosecuted are ridiculous. This is not something the Government is interested in doing at all.

Implementing nationally consistent lists of illegal drugs and drug ingredients is important to stopping the drug trade across Australia.

Some ingredients used for manufacturing illegal drugs are contained in commonly occurring plants. However, the Commonwealth’s drug laws target people who are involved in the illicit drug trade and that will continue to be the case.

Most of the substances to be included on the new lists are already deemed to be illegal and have been for some time.

The Attorney General’s Department consultation period has now closed. I will consider the views presented and determine appropriate action – and that won’t include banning backyard plants or pursuing their law-abiding owners.

This statement outlined above is along the same lines as the statement made on 24 January and does not address any of the questions raised in emails that relate to questions raised by NGIA and other members of the public via their submissions.

Australia Horticulture have again asked for the questions raised in emails to be answered and have been advised that the Minister will have to get back to us at a later date. We look forward to his response.

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