Bidwill of Wide Bay: A Botanist Cut Short · Thanks to Robert Taylor Pince, it had a major hybridisation program with gladioli from South Africa, ... (Nerium oleander); Hippeastrum

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Bidwill of Wide Bay: A Botanist Cut Short

Stuart Read

Queensland Review / Volume 19 / Special Issue 01 / June 2012, pp 75 88DOI: 10.1017/qre.2012.7, Published online: 03 September 2012

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1321816612000074

How to cite this article:Stuart Read (2012). Bidwill of Wide Bay: A Botanist Cut Short. Queensland Review, 19, pp 7588 doi:10.1017/qre.2012.7

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Bidwill of Wide Bay: A Botanist CutShort

Stuart Read

John Carne Bidwill was born in 1815 in England and died in Queensland in 1853.His short life is relevant to Australia’s garden history, botany, the horticultural useof Australian plants in European gardens and the colonial history of Sydney, NewZealand, Wide Bay and Maryborough. He may have been the first to introduce plantbreeding into Australia. In a short life, and working in his spare time, he contributedmore than many full-time and longer-lived horticulturists. This included discoveringnew species, crossing new hybrids (specific and inter-generic), and propagating andpromulgating plants for the nursery trade and gardeners. His efforts are marked byhis name gracing many Australian and New Zealand plants, exotic plant hybridsand modern suburbs of Sydney and Maryborough. This brief biography outlinesBidwill’s time in Australasia and Queensland.

Early LifeJohn Carne Bidwill was born in St Thomas, Exeter, England in 1815, the son ofJoseph Green Bidwill, a businessman with shipping interests. He spent two yearsin Canada from the age of 17.

Hybridising plants was big business in Exeter, the location of the great Veitch’snursery. Lucombe Pince & Co., a famous nursery in St Thomas’s, had collectorscombing the globe (Mexico, Brazil, West Africa and Australia) for new plants.Thanks to Robert Taylor Pince, it had a major hybridisation program with gladiolifrom South Africa, which started a few months after Bidwill’s return from Canada.It is possible Bidwill’s father had some influence with Mr Pince, for a sweet watertable-grape cultivar, Bidwell’s (sic) Seedling was raised in Exeter about this time.

Early in 1838, John Carne Bidwill obtained a letter of introduction from LordGlenelg, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Major Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General and explorer, then in London. Mitchell in turn wrote a letter of introductionto the Colonial Secretary in New South Wales, Edward Deas-Thompson, pointingout that Bidwill was ‘respectably connected in Devonshire’. Fellow ex-Devonians,the Macarthurs of New South Wales, were likewise connected. Armed with this,and travelling on the family firm’s barque Arachne with his sister Elizabeth, bySeptember 1838, aged 23, Bidwill was in Sydney.1

On behalf of his father and family, he applied for 1800 acres on the ManningRiver, intending to set up business in Australia. While waiting on the land tobe surveyed and for issue of the grant, he set up a business as merchants and

Queensland ReviewVolume 19 | Issue 1 | 2012 | pp. 75–88 | c© Cambridge University Press 2012 | doi 10.1017/qre.2012.7

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commission agents with William Tucker, of Tucker & Co., Queens Court, Sydneyto import livestock, cider, spirits, wine, wool, breweries and jewellery. Tucker wasthe eldest son of an Exeter bank manager, and had sailed for Sydney a few weeksprior to Bidwill’s return there from Canada. Bidwill at this time also travelled andspeculated in land, as well as plant-hunting.2

Reluctant to pay the inflated (now more than doubled) price the colonial govern-ment was now asking for the Manning River land, Bidwill continued in his merchantactivities. He spent a good deal of time in and out of Sydney while waiting on theland grant, making plant-hunting expeditions in the hinterland and further afield,to Moreton Bay. He at times counted Sir William Macarthur of Camden Parkas patron and colleague in searching for, supplying, hybridising and promulgatingplants to gardeners via the nascent (in Australia) and refulgent (in England) nurserytrade. He appears to have used Clovelly in Watson’s Bay as a base, as the propertywas then leased (from 1838) by a nephew, Hannibal Macarthur.3

Restless: New Zealand expeditions, 1839–48Bidwill spent five months in New Zealand in 1839 (in the Bay of Plenty and thecentral volcanic plateau: he was the first European man to climb Mount Tongariroand active volcano Ngauruhoe and only the second to visit Lake Taupo – the firstonly three weeks previously) from where he sent plants to Alexander Macleay ofElizabeth Bay, Sydney and also a shipment described as ‘East India seeds’, peachstones originating from Kabul and in 1841, conifers and birch seed. He also shippedplants to John Lindley, secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society in London andinfluential author who ‘never published one of them’,4 much to Bidwill’s annoyance.He also sent New Zealand plants to Joseph Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens,Kew.

This was a prelude to three further expeditions between 1840 and 1848, pre-dominantly on the North Island’s central volcanic plateau and around the SouthIsland’s Nelson area, collecting about 90 species of flora, many new to science andgardeners. Bidwill wrote and published Rambles in New Zealand (1841), copies ofwhich were subscribed to by famous English nurseryman, James Veitch, and an-other Exeter nursery proprietor, R.T. Pince. Bidwill’s collecting was the first frominland New Zealand.

He later bought land in Wellington’s town settlement, intending to settle there.His brother, Charles ‘Robert’ Bidwill (who left England in 1840), bought otherland in Petone and Lower Hutt, and the family remained involved with the NewZealand colony. Bidwill sold part of his land off to Joseph Hewlett Percy – to-day, this is the charming Percy Gardens Reserve – a nature reserve and pleasureground in Lower Hutt. Examples of New Zealand plants Bidwill collected in-clude Sophora microphylla (kowhai), S. Tetraptera and Veronica nivea. Veronicanivea was described in Rambles in New Zealand: ‘A few patches of a most beau-tiful snow-white Veronica, which I first took for snow, were growing among thestones.’

Other New Zealand species commemorating Bidwill include the alpine sub-shrubForstera, the North Island mountain shrub daisy Brachyglottis (syn. Senecio), themountain or bog pine Halocarpus (syn. Dacrydium), mountain sandalwood Exo-carpus and mountain cedar/kaikawaka, Libocedrus and Parahebe. Bidwill named

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Bidwill of Wide Bay

the tiny scented Easter orchid he found near Lake Taupo Earina autumnalis, andwas first to collect the herb Scutellaria novae-zelandicae on the Waimea plain out-side Nelson. This species has rarely been collected in the region since.

Bidwill also sent specimens to Sir William Hooker, Director at Kew BotanicGarden (1841–65), who named Veronica bidwillii in his honour. These formedpart of Hooker’s herbarium, later to become the nucleus of today’s Royal BotanicGardens, Kew. In 1841, Sir William Hooker’s son, Joseph, arrived in Sydney onthe voyage of the Erebus and Terror and botanised with Bidwill.

Plant Import/Export and Hybridisation, 1840sOn his return from New Zealand, Bidwill mixed with an influential group of Sydneyhorticulturists, including Phillip Parker King (son of the former Governor PhillipGidley King), William Macarthur and Bowman. He sent seed from his crosses tothem and carried out more crosses in their gardens.

In the 1840s financial crash, Bidwill’s company, Tucker & Co., was declaredinsolvent. He lost his New South Wales holdings, but kept his Wellington, NewZealand land. Tucker started business again in 1848 on George Street, and thecompany survives today as Rosebery, Windham & Tucker.5

Meanwhile, Bidwill experimented with both native and exotic plants. In 1841 hefirst raised hybrid Amaryllis, although these didn’t flower until 1847. He broughtback shipments of exotics from Kew and London nurseries, such as pineapples, theMexican hand flower tree (Cheiranthodendron pentadactylon) and bird-of-paradiseflowers (Strelitzia alba (now S. nicolai) and S. reginae). He persuaded AlexanderMacleay, William Macarthur and James Bowman (of Lyndhurst, Glebe and laterRavensworth in the Hunter Valley) to hybridise gladioli. Macarthur in particulartook this challenge up, and considerable correspondence in the Mitchell Librarydocuments this activity.

Bidwill found a number of native species or subspecies. Boronia ledifolia var.triphylla, a native heath found on Sydney sandstone, was recorded in 1841 inCamden Park garden and was probably collected by Bidwill. Jasminium bidwillii;(syn. J. didymum ssp. lineare) was listed in the 1850 and 1857 Camden Park nurserycatalogues. Macarthur probably obtained this around 1841 from Bidwill, who hadcollected specimens from around Mt Beerwah. Both men thought it to be a newspecies.

The native orchid Dendrobium kingianum was discovered by Bidwill, who tookit to England where it was first flowered at Loddiges Nursery in Hackney, Londonin 1844. The Botanical Register quotes: ‘epiphyte bought . . . at the sale of Mr.Bidwill’s New Holland plants’.

Bidwill’s hybridising was wide-ranging, including:

� the 1841 crossing of Cape bulbs Amaryllis x belladonna x Brunsvigia spp. (vari-ous named hybrid ‘naked lady’ or belladonna lilies, which have since gone rightaround the world and remain popular)

� the 1843 crossing (in Sydney) of native Hibiscus splendens x H. heterophyllus –which he named H. x ‘Sydney’; re-crossing this with H. x Richardsonii, he gotwhat he called H. x ‘Pyrmontii’

� gladioli of various hues

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Stuart Read

(Colour online) Camden Park’s shrubbery was the recipient of many Bidwill introductions. Courtesy StuartRead.

� crossing native river lily Crinum pedunculatum with (South African) C. capense� Rosa (chinensis) ‘Imogen’ (Camden Park, 1845), a cluster-flowered hybrid China

bred at Camden Park; Macarthur called it a ‘new hybrid, pure white’ in a 1845letter to Adelaide nurseryman John Bailey

� South African corn lilies (Ixia spp.)� oleanders (Nerium oleander);� Hippeastrum lilies, and� Camellia hybrids.

Boonyi, Bunya Bunya or Petrie’s Pine?Araucaria bidwillii, the tree we today call bunya pine, was ‘discovered’ by respectedexplorer, architect/engineer/superintendent of government works Andrew Petrie in1838. Its height and distinctive dark silhouette made it stand out among surround-ing eucalypts. First reports of the tree came from escaped convicts and then freecolonists such as Petrie. He collected samples on a trip north from the settlementat Moreton Bay to the Glass House Mountains with Aboriginal people. He madea sketch of it and it became known locally as Pinus petrieana or ‘Petrie’s pine’,6

though it does not seem to have been so named in print. He wrote in his diaryof the bunya nut feast of Aborigines, a period of major gathering, parliament orconcourse of tribes and clans far and wide ‘to them it was a real pleasure. Theywere so light-hearted – gay, nothing troubled them.’7

In 1842, Bidwill was said to have met early explorer and pastoralist, HenryRussell at Kilcoy when hunting bunya pines and to have found ten seedlings, of


Bidwill of Wide Bay

which three were the ones he (Bidwill) took to England.8 When Bidwill visitedMoreton Bay in 1841, he described the bunya pine – it may be that Petrie gavehim seed of the tree, as Bidwill was known as a botanist. Bidwill sent the seed toWilliam Macarthur to propagate. Macarthur propagated it for sale in Australiaand abroad, and sent plants to the Sydney Botanic Garden – the species is listedfrom his 1850 nursery catalogue onwards.

Bidwill left Sydney for London on the Arachne in 1843 with a shipment ofAustralian and New Zealand plants, including dried and live Bunya pine plantsand other plants raised in the colony. His collection of very rare orchids, jasmines,ferns and other plants was auctioned in London and Dendrobium kingianum,Earina autumnalis, bunya pines and stag horn ferns went to the Royal BotanicGardens, Kew. A supposed inter-generic hybrid, x Crinum amaryllis, failed to findan English buyer and was brought back to Sydney.

Introductions and affiliations were critical to advancement in the gentlemen’sfields of natural history, botany and horticulture. When Bidwill met JosephHooker in Sydney in 1841, Philip King had promised him an introduction toJoseph’s father, Sir William, then the newly appointed Director of the RoyalBotanic Gardens, Kew. He had already sent Sir William specimens from NewZealand.

In 1842, Bidwill published the first account of the bunya pine in Australia, whichwas later reprinted in England.9 The introduction was effected during this visit andSir William named the bunya pine Araucaria bidwillii after Bidwill. In London,Bidwill visited the great botanist Robert Brown at the British Museum. Browngave Bidwill an introduction to the Hon. and Very Rev. William Herbert,10 Deanof Manchester University and a great hybridiser of liliaceae. Herbert gave Bidwillseeds of Gladiolus species then not known in Australia, and Bidwill reciprocatedwith his own hybrid plants. Herbert praised his work, named a bulbous plantBidwillia after him (possibly Trachyandra sp. from South Africa), and encouragedand later corresponded with him.

Sometimes the first-published names of plants are misleading. Bidwill is creditedin the name of a hybrid coral tree, a cross of Erythrina herbacea x E. crista-galli(the cock’s comb coral tree), a medium shrub with striking crimson flowers. E. xbidwillii was named by William Macarthur ‘E. Camdeni’, as he had raised it in hisgarden at Camden Park. Bidwill sent the plant to the Hon. and Very Rev. WilliamHerbert in Manchester. Despite this possibly being Bidwill’s only involvement inthe plant, Herbert named it after Bidwill when it was illustrated in Lindley’s Botan-ical Register or Ornamental Flower Garden (1847). This was the first illustrationpublished of an ornamental hybrid garden plant raised in Australia.11 Today, bothsources are acknowledged as it is now referred to as Erythrina x bidwillii ‘Cam-deni’ (1847). Another hybrid coral tree bred by Macarthur, E. x bidwillii ‘Blakei’,is more herbaceous and lower-growing in form.

Bidwill returned to Sydney in 1844 on the Arachne with his sister Mary, aquantity of strychnine and an impressive collection of plants and seeds, and resumedwork. He supplied Alexander Macleay at Elizabeth Bay with a collection of seedsbrought back from England and another from Bolivia. He introduced to New SouthWales Lilium speciosum, the kaffir lily, Clivia nobilis, the empress tree (Paulowniatomentosa), Clerodendrum speciosissimum and the scented climber Stephanotisfloribunda, originally from Madagascar.


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In June 1844, William Macarthur described Bidwill’s initial contribution tobringing plants from England:

Since I last wrote we have had a very great accession of plants to our collectionamounting to nearly 300 species and varieties. We owe the greater part of theseto the kindness of a friend who besides being a very scientific man is very zealousin the cause of horticulture. After a residence of several years in New Zealand heproceeded to England early last year and returned to Sydney after about 14 monthsabsence with the splendid collections of plants above mentioned.12

Among these was a selection of the best apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricots,figs, a Malta orange, new azaleas, rhododendrons, a dozen oak, pine and fir speciesas well as roses, other shrubs, trees and bulbs. These included Strelitzia nicolai andS. reginae (the South African birds-of-paradise flowers in white and orange and theangel’s trumpets, Brugmansia suaveolens and B. sanguinea from Latin America.Macarthur added that: ‘In two years at farthest we shall I trust be prepared todistribute the varieties amongst our fellow colonists.’

In 1846, Bidwill procured more seed for Macarthur of ‘the araucaria you wanted. . . Bunya Mountains . . . I only lost two men, speared by the Blacks’.

The Journal of Botany reported in 1855 that a large bunya pine cone was sentto the Exhibition Universelle at Paris in that year by Charles Parkinson of MoretonBay, who reported:

When the proper season arrives, the natives assemble in great numbers fromvery great distances all around, for the purposes of eating the fruit, which theygenerally roast. Each tribe has its own peculiar set of trees, and each family itsown allotment among them. These are handed down from year to year, with thegreatest exactness, and if anyone is found in a tree not belonging to him, a fightor ‘pullen pullen’ is the inevitable consequence.13

In 1902–03, Sydney Botanic Gardens Director (and some-time historian) JosephMaiden wrote ‘desultory articles’ (small biographies) of all previous directors upuntil Charles Moore (1848). In 1906, he described Bidwill (in the context of writingabout the naming of the bunya pine) as ‘a self-effacing man, and in consequencefew people know his great merits as a botanist’.14

A boom in bunya pine exports proceeded for a time. A similar boom in NorfolkIsland pines was proceeding from Tasmania.

Passionfruit and Orchid Cacti: Tahiti, 1845–46Bidwill spent much of 1845–46 in Tahiti, trying with faltering success amid socialunrest (the French had just usurped the Queen there), to set up a passionfruitindustry. Macarthur sent him orchid cacti plants (including Epiphyllum sp.) andtried tempting him back to New South Wales, offering him the management ofRavensworth near Singleton, the home of Edward Macarthur Bowman. Whilerejecting this, Bidwill was pleased at his friend’s efforts to have him appointedSuperintendent of the Sydney Botanic Gardens. Following the death of NasmithRobertson in 1844, James Kidd had been acting in his position with poor results.

Plants flowed from Tahiti to Sydney: the shrub Pittosporum undulatum (syn.P. taitensis) growing in Camden Park was possibly sourced from Bidwill’s timethere, as was the first papaya seed raised in New South Wales. Hibiscus liliflorus


Bidwill of Wide Bay

x rosa-sinensis was bred in Tahiti, given to the Sydney Botanic Garden in 1847and then by William Macarthur to the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew to name thefollowing year.

Crunch Year and Career Change: Wide Bay, 1847–48Since the death of Allan Cunningham in 1839, the Sydney Botanic Garden was rundown after four directors in a decade and drought. In 1847, the famous fig treeavenue lining the main entrance road to the Gardens from the city’s Bent Streethad been planted – fragments of this remain today in the ‘trench’ that is the CahillExpressway cut at the height of Sydney’s car fever in the 1950s. The credit for theavenue appears to be Bidwill’s rather than belonging to his successor, Moore.

On the recommendation of Professors John Lindley and John Henslow in 1848,Charles Moore was appointed Director of the Sydney Botanic Garden and Govern-ment Botanist by Secretary for State for the Colonies, Earl Grey, in London. Moorewas a horticulturist of Scottish extraction whose brother was managing GlasnevinBotanic Gardens in Dublin. He arrived in Sydney in January 1848 to a mess. TheCommittee of Superintendence set up by Governor Sir Richard Bourke (1831–37) covered Sydney’s two scientific institutions, the Australian Museum and theBotanic Garden. It comprised eleven prominent men, including Alexander Macleayand William Macarthur, and Bidwill had been appointed ‘Government Botanistand Director’ (the first use of this title) to the same job in 1847 by the Gover-nor of New South Wales, Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy, on William Macarthur’srecommendation. Despite his strong credentials, his plans for a hybridisation andintroduction program, his interest in networking to enhance the gardens and hisplans for complete remodelling thereof, Bidwill was forced to leave.

The rumblings and interference of the Committee of Superintendence persisted,but Moore held on to the post. He endured a bumpy start, with erratic officialsupport and labour shortages once the gold rushes started. Moore’s record tenurelasted until 1896, during which he extended the lower gardens into Farm Coveover ‘the thirty years wall’ (a sea wall supporting extensive reclaimed land from thelower garden into the bay of Farm Cove), made many acclaimed improvements,gave public lectures and sent plants out statewide. What Bidwill would have madeof the job is a moot point. Bidwill was very critical of Moore, as he was no botanist,and scientific work stagnated for 50 years under his watch.

Fitzroy gave Bidwill a consolation prize, at increased pay well above that ofMoore’s: Commissioner of (Crown) Lands for the Wide Bay district in one ofthe newly declared pastoral districts of New South Wales, in what later becameQueensland. He took up the post in November 1848 after another trip to NewZealand. He was also harbour master, officiator at weddings and funerals, clerk ofpetty sessions and magistrate in what was frontier country effectively at war withlocal Aborigines. The town was a notion rather than a reality – a post office wasbuilt in 1849. He was unimpressed with the locals, as he confided in a letter to hisbrother soon after arrival: ‘This is the most infernal place possible. There has beennothing but drunkedness (sic.) here since I came. I fear my magisterial duties willbe troublesome . . . ’15

He based himself at Tinana Creek, building a house and two gardens on his800 acre paddock. He hoped that the garden near the house would develop into a


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botanic garden. At Tinana, Bidwill was vulnerable to attack or stealing as the localAborigines were still very hostile and many residents went armed, even while in thevillage. On at least one occasion (1849), the settlement was attacked and his lifewas threatened by about ‘200 warriors’.16

Some 18 miles up-river from Tinana, Bidwill described a lagoon covered withblue water lilies a foot in diameter. He continued sending specimens of plantsto Kew, the Sydney Botanic Gardens and Macarthur at Camden Park. At hisrequest, fruit trees and a case of succulents were sent from Kew in 1849. He mayhave been the first person to plant sugar cane in what is now Queensland, whichbecame the basis of a huge industry. From there he sent his father a brigalow log,Acacia harpophylla, then still undescribed but mooted as a furniture timber, tothe Great Exhibition in London of 1851, where it was exhibited as from ‘J.G.Bidwell of Zinana’. Some of his greatest discoveries and introductions to Europewere from this period: Agathis robusta, the Queensland kauri, and Akania bidwillii(grown as Lomatia bidwillii for 40 years at Kew before it flowered and could bereclassified).

Of the kauri, it is alleged that in 1842 Andrew Petrie, the first European to seethe Mary River in what is now Queensland’s Wide Bay region, wrote in his diary:‘in this scrub I found a new species of pine . . . similar to the New Zealand Cowriepine’.17 It is certain that in that year an Aboriginal man told Bidwill about such atree and that on New Year’s Day 1849 he found the new conifer growing on whatwas to become the site of Maryborough. To get the single cone it bore, he had tohave the whole 50 metre tree felled. Seeds were sent to Sir William Macarthur atCamden Park. By the end of March 1849, Bidwill was building his house of thewood of the tree he had felled. By 1850, Macarthur was selling kauri plants at10 shillings each and sent plants to the Sydney Botanic Garden. Originally calledDammara bidwillii in the trade, its name was not validly published (it was laterrenamed Agathis robusta).18

Tinana and Wide Bay were by no means salubrious at the time, and conditionswere rough. Bidwill was periodically lonely and depressed, but continued exploringthe region. He is credited with the discovery of gold in Gympie, although he keptit quiet19 – it was discovered again in 1867. Brachychiton australis, relative of theIllawarra flame tree and the bottle tree, had been collected in Queensland by anotheresteemed botanist, Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, and in Wide Bay this species wascollected by Bidwill. It was listed in the 1850 Camden Park nursery catalogue andthe shrub was noted by William Macarthur in an 1848 letter to Loddiges Nursery:‘I have a very beautiful flowering crimson Sterculia (nova sp.) from Moreton Bayto send you.’ (It was later named Brachychiton bidwillii.) Bidwill’s seeds weresent from Wide Bay to Kew in 1851.20 The listing for two scented climber Hoyaspecies in the 1850 Camden Park nursery catalogue (possibly a form of H. australis)suggests they were Australian species sent from Wide Bay by Bidwill.21

Yet another introduction to cultivation was Moreton Bay’s blue water lily,Nymphaea gigantea, corms of which Bidwill discovered on a business trip in 1841and sent to Kew in 1852. It was considered a worthy companion to the wonder ofwater lilies, South America’s Victoria amazonica (for which British worthies hadglass houses custom built, such as Paxton’s design for the Duke of Devonshire atChatsworth. Another is in the Adelaide Botanic Garden.) The lily was depicted inthe Royal Horticultural Society Journal in 1860.


Bidwill of Wide Bay

(Colour online) Brachy-chiton bidwillii. Bidwillsent seed from WideBay to Kew in 1851.Source: http://www.hortuscamden.com.

By March 1853, Bidwill was dead. He had been blazing a shorter road fromWide Bay to Moreton Bay on an 1851 instruction from Governor Fitzroy whenhe got lost for some weeks in the dense rainforest scrubs in the headwaters andtributaries of the Mary River near today’s Gympie and Kilcoy. Despite being foundand helped by Aborigines and returning to Tinana, his health deteriorated andhe never recovered from this experience. He was buried near the bottom of hisbeautiful fruit and vegetable garden with four Bunya pines planted on site aroundthe grave. These were still alive in 1950,22 but they are gone now).

The striking red Grevillea banksii var. fosteri is also listed in the 1850 and 1857Camden Park nursery catalogues. The tree form, widespread from Maryboroughto Bundaberg, was possibly collected by Bidwill or Charles Moore in South-EastQueensland in 1853.23 Moore claimed to have introduced this into cultivation in1853, after ‘a visit to Queensland where he met Bidwill from Wide Bay’,24 but thismust be incorrect. Moore went to Maryborough in 1853 to examine and documentthe remains of the botanic garden Bidwill had established. He didn’t think it worthtransporting and preserving the collection of plants remaining, but gathered seedsfor the Sydney Botanic Gardens and for the Grand International Exposition of1855 in Paris. Among these must have been Queensland kauri, as in that year hesent out plants in bulk to Kew, Veitch’s Nursery in Chelsea and botanic gardens inJava and South Africa.

Around his grave at Tinana were planted four mango trees (Mangifera indica),perhaps the first such planted in Queensland.25 By 1919, the garden had alreadybeen vandalised and a mango (perhaps the first grown in Australia) and the bunyabunyas were ringbarked.

LegaciesAccounts of Aborigines’ fierce protection of the bunya pines led to an officialproclamation in 1842 prohibiting settlers from cutting down the trees. However,they were progressively felled all the same, making way for fields. The remaining


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(Colour online) Bidwill’s gravestone in Tinana, Maryborough. Courtesy Colin Mills.

bunya pines were cordoned off in 1908 for protection in Queensland’s secondnational park at the Bunya Mountains. Ironically, at the time its natural range hadshrunk to two ‘island’ populations, the tree had made its way around the world inprivate gardens, parks and botanic gardens. The networks of empire spread far andwide and this distinctive silhouette graces many a foreign skyline today. Brisbane’sCity Botanic Gardens has a line of bunya pines planted in 1855–60 by its firstsuperintendent, Walter Hill,26 that continue to thrive – floods or not.

It is not unusual to see bunya and Norfolk Island pines towering above a Sicilianor Tuscan palazzo, a Portuguese castle, a French corniche, an English or Irishmansion, or a North or South American botanic garden. Queensland academicAnna Haebich has documented what she calls the ‘bunya diaspora’ around theworld, from New Zealand to Norway.27


Bidwill of Wide Bay

Bidwill’s Australian specimens remain in herbariums at Kew, Berlin, Leiden,Melbourne and Missouri, while New Zealand plants are held in Cambridge. Hiscollections live on at Camden Park, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney and manyother gardens. His 1841 book, Rambles in New Zealand, documents his adven-tures to many parts of the North Island never previously seen by a white person.He was generous with information – his letters were widely quoted in publicationsby others, particularly on plant hunting and introductions. He introduced manylive plants to Europe, and in exchange introduced from there and from Tahitieconomic plants including papayas and perhaps the mango as well as many orna-mentals. Australian horticulturists and gardeners can be thankful he introduced anumber of economic and ornamental plants here, including bananas, passionfruitand pawpaws, to name a few.

Bidwill was at the centre of colonial botany and horticulture. He was WilliamMacarthur’s key expert on the introduction of new plants, and their hybridisingand selection for Australian conditions, as well as discovering and exporting NewZealand, Australian and Tahitian plants and sometimes their hybridising withexotics. He was at the forefront of hybridising ornamentals, particularly amaryllidssuch as x Amarygia cultivars (naked ladies or belladonna lilies), which are nowpopular around the world. Despite his short tenure at the Royal Botanic Garden,Sydney, he was concerned for its welfare as a scientific, rather than recreational,institution.

Richard Clough, who has done much research on Bidwill’s Australian hybridis-ation work, says of him: ‘He did more in his short life . . . working his spare time,for Australian gardening, than most full-time and long-lived horticulturists.’28

Bidwill is commemorated by name in many plants. Before a major reclassificationof Australian plants, about 40 species carried the specie name of bidwillii. Evenfollowing reclassification,29 these include:

� Akania bidwillii� Brachychiton bidwillii� hybrid coral trees Erythrina x bidwillii ‘Blakei’ and ‘Camdeni’ (1846 and 1847

respectively)� hybrid Hibiscus such as ‘x Sydneyi’ and H. x liliiflorus-rosa-sinensis� various hybrid ‘naked lady’ lilies, Amaryllis x belladonna x Brunsvigia spp.

cv.s� Cape bulb hybrids – Crinum, Brunsvigia and x Amarygia cv.s – and� Bunya pine, Araucaria bidwillii.

That naming also extends to about a dozen species in New Zealand, including:

� an alpine sub-shrub, Forstera� North Island mountain shrub daisy, Brachyglottis (syn. Senecio)� mountain or bog pine, Halocarpus (syn. Dacrydium)� mountain sandalwood, Exocarpus� mountain cedar, Libocedrus� Parahebe


Stuart Read

� Bidwillia (possibly a Cape Trachyandra sp.), and� a few native plants from Tahiti, including the gesneriad, Cyrtandra bidwillii.

Thanks to a vigorous group of volunteer gardeners and propagators led by ColinMills, the garden, and most importantly the nursery, at Camden Park are againtoday propagating, growing and selling plants from this famous garden, whichinclude Bidwill’s hybrids or plants bearing his name. This means many existingAustralian gardens can have a bit of Bidwill in them.

Increasing interest in native plants, and in selection and more garden-worthy(e.g. dwarf) forms suited to smaller modern gardens, means revisiting some ofthe hybrids and species introduced into the nursery trade and gardens by Bidwill.Brachychiton bidwillii, for instance, is a highly attractive small to medium-sizedshrub that flowers intermittently and has highly attractive leaves. It would fit manymore gardens than its ‘big sisters’ – all trees: Illawarra flame, lacebark, kurrajong,bottle tree.

His name graces a suburb north-west of Blacktown, which is one of Sydney’s sixdecentralised city cores. Blacktown’s Bidwill has a number of its streets, a reserveand a square named with titles to do with him, including Bidwill Square, BidwillReserve and Carne Way, Exeter Place, Tinana Place, Bunya Road, Wide Bay Circuit,Macarthur Way, Tongariro Terrace. These may derive from a biographical sketchof Bidwill published by Joseph Maiden in 1908. It also graces a suburb of modernMaryborough – two suburbs, if you associate Tinana.

There is, alas, no known portrait of him, and but there are two memorials tohim in Australia. Until a few years ago, Bidwill’s lone grave in Tinana lay neglectedand forlorn, but a concerted effort by the former Woocoo (now Wide Bay) ShireCouncil saw the creation of a reserve around the site and its restoration. Furtherrecognition came with a replica of his headstone, which was placed in QueensPark, Maryborough under a bunya pine believed to be a specimen propagated byWalter Hill from one in his botanic garden at Tinana.30 In 2001, MaryboroughCity Council established in the midst of the town a Bidwill Arboretum, centred onthe Bunya pine by the restored replica headstone. Around it will grow some of theplants named after him.

AcknowledgementsThe author extends particular thanks to: Keith Jorgensen, ex-Maryborough res-ident for his generosity and many leads; Professor David Mabberley, Directorof the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney for his research and writings on Bidwill,which pricked my interest; Colin Mills for Hortus Camdenensis, with its referencesto Bidwill; and Professor Richard Clough for his research on Bidwill’s planthybridisation.

Endnotes1 Mabberley, David, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation in Colonial NSW: The Work of

J.C. Bidwill, Sydney’s First Director’, Telopea 6(4) (1996): 542.

2 The native orchid Dendrobium tetragronum was introduced to England in 1838 fromMoreton Bay, possibly by Bidwill.


Bidwill of Wide Bay

3 In 1838, Clovelly Watson’s Bay (built in 1834 for Thomas Watson and named after aDevonshire village) was leased by Hannibal Macarthur, Phillip Parker-King’s brother-in-law. Bidwill was on friendly terms with P.P. King and family in both Port Stephens andSydney. In 1848, Clovelly was bought by Henry Parker, private secretary to Sir GeorgeGipps (Governor 1838◦46 and Premier of New South Wales, 1856–57) and later, as SirHenry, Governor himself. Parker married Emmeline Macarthur, the youngest daughterof pioneer John Macarthur, in 1843. Bidwill was on good terms with the Macarthurs andparticularly Emmeline’s brother, William. The Parkers enlarged Clovelly’s garden, addinglots of exotic plants.

4 Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 543.

5 Rosebery, Windham & Tucker’s ‘Chateau Tanunda’ brandy 1920s sign in Sydney’s St JamesRailway station entry (east of Market Street, Sydney) may be the earliest neon sign inSydney (or at least the earliest that survives).

6 Huth, John, ‘The Bunya Pine: The Romantic Araucaria of Queensland’, in Araucariaceae –Proceedings of the 2002 Araucariaceae Symposium, Araucaria – Agathis – Wollemia, Auck-land, New Zealand, 14–17/3/2002, eds Rod Bieleski and Mike Wilcox (Auckland: Interna-tional Dendrology Society, 2009), 271; Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’,544; Mabberley, David, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 18 (2000):32.

7 Tom Petrie, of the bunya nut feast, cited in Marion Halligan, ‘A Sufficiently ExcitingOccupation’, in The Nature of Gardens, ed. Peter Timms (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000).

8 Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 33 notes that in 1840, Petrie and Russell wentlooking for grazing land and the Bunya pine, but only found the land. Huth, ‘The BunyaPine’: 271 says Bidwill and Russell met in 1842 or 1843. He adds that, in an 1888 account,Russell showed Bidwill a bunya pine on Kilcoy. Bidwill dug up three of ten Bunya pineseedlings under it. These were sent to England. He clarifies that Bidwill sent a ‘male twig’of bunya to London in 1842; and branches, male and female cones and a plant to Londonin 1843 (after visiting the tree).

9 Bidwill’s account was written in July 1841 and predates observations made in 1842 byGerman missionary W. Schmidt and published in the Colonial Observer, 7 December 1842:662. William Jackson Hooker, double plate illustration by his artist, Walter Hood Fitch,and a description, in the London Journal of Botany 2 (1843: 403, tt. 18–19, in Mabberley,‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 32. Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 544also cites a letter by H. Bidwill (his handwriting being difficult to decipher) published inTasmanian Journal of Natural Science 1 (1842): 404 and in the (London) Annual Magazineof Natural History 8 (1842): 439.

10 Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 546 says Hooker introduced him toHerbert. Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 37 says it was Brown who made theintroduction. Both were eminent botanists, so whichever it was, this just strengthens thegoodwill and integrity with which Bidwill was regarded by contemporaries at the top oftheir field.

11 Clough, Richard, ‘Mr Bidwill’s Erythrina’. Australian Garden History 3(4) (1992): 10.

12 http://www.hortuscamden.com/Bidwill. Accessed 20 February 2012.

13 Letter to William Macarthur. (source:http://www.hortuscamden.com/Araucaria bidwillii)Accessed 20 February 2012.

14 Gilbert, Lionel, The Little Giant: The Life and Work of Joseph Henry Maiden, 1859–1925(Sydney: Kardoorair Press in association with Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney), 191.

15 Clift, Tony, ‘John Carne Bidwill: Wide Bay’s First Commissioner of Crown Lands’.In Mapping & Surveying/People/Bidwill (Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 2010),


Stuart Read

http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/museum/articles_complete/people/bidwill.html. Accessed20 February 2012. See also Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 552.

16 Clift, ‘John Carne Bidwill’.

17 Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 104–5. Charles Moore changed Dammara bid-willii to D. robusta, and this name was published with an illustration of the 1853 plantgrowing in the Sydney Botanic Gardens (25 feet high, grown from Bidwill’s seed grown byMacarthur) in 1857. Dammara gets its genus name from the word damar, the South-EastAsian word for natural copals, gums and resins used to caulk (waterproof) wooden sailingships. Damars were crucial to making ships seaworthy. Dammara was later renamed asAgathis robusta.

18 Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 108; Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hy-bridisation’: 553.

19 McKinnon, Firmin, Early Days of Maryborough (read by him before the Historical Societyof Queensland at a meeting on 22 May 1947) (Brisbane: Historical Society of Queensland,1947). http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:215335/s18378366_1947_3_6_473.pdf.Accessed 20 February 2012481; Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 554.

20 Camden Park Nursery Group, ‘Plant Notes, Brachychiton bidwillii’.

21 http://www.hortuscamden.com/Hoya sp. Accessed 20 February 2012.

22 Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 554.

23 Quoted by Olde, Peter and Marriot, Neil, The Grevillea Book (3 vols) (Sydney: KangarooPress, 1994), 49.

24 Olde and Marriot, The Grevillea Book.

25 McKinnon, Early Days of Maryborough, 481.

26 McKinnon, Ross, ‘Colonial Plants: The Bunya Bunya Pine, Araucaria Bidwillii’. AustralianGarden History 7(4) (1996): 4.

27 Haebich, Anna, ‘Assimilating Nature: The Bunya Diaspora’, Queensland Review 10(2)(2003), ‘Tropical Pleasures – a focus on Queensland Gardens’ special issue, edited byGlenn Cooke: 47–58.

28 Clough, Richard, ‘Bidwill, John Carne’, The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, edsRichard Aitken and Michael Looker (Oxford: Oxford University Press & AGHS, 1992):90–1.

29 http://www.hortuscamden.com/Bidwill. Accessed 20 February 2012.

30 Interestingly, the replica gravestone in Queen’s Park, Maryborough was a gift of theAustralasian Native Orchid Society – Wide Bay Group.


Bidwill of Wide Bay: A Botanist Cut Short · Thanks to Robert Taylor Pince, it had a major hybridisation program with gladioli from South Africa, ... (Nerium oleander); Hippeastrum

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