The journey was long and tortuous. Mitchell Korda and a colleague from the National Seed Bank hiked the Australian Alps on remote trails, scrambled up steep slopes and spent a night in tents.
When they arrived at their destination, they were pleasantly surprised to find not one but two of the very rare plants they had come looking for: the Namadgi tea tree [Leptosperum namadgiense] and the purple dwarf [violette naine – Viola improcera].
After the terrible bushfires of the “black summer” [en 2019-2020]several seed collectors had traveled to Alpine National Park in Victoria, Namadgi National Park in the Australian Capital Territory and Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales in the hope of finding five rare species of endogenous plants: Namadgi tea tree, parrot pea [pois perroquet – Dillwynia glaberrima]violette woman, bush daisy [marguerite du bush – Olearia pimeleoides mallee] and pheballium [une herbacée].
On a search for the Namadgi tea tree, the two men were delighted to discover in a remote place in Namadgi National Park – the largest area of bogs and ferns in the Australian Alps – that dwarf violets, unknown in this area before, were growing in the same place.
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