It’s a rare plant of state significance, a “million-to-one” discovery, that lay dormant near Blackheath until Hazelbrook TAFE horticulture teacher Colin Hunt stumbled over it a few years ago.
It led to an international collaboration with a botanic geneticist from Europe, field biology work in New Zealand and national attention last month when the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage announced the discovery of the plant that could live off fungus and smelt like dead fish.
“Like most discoveries in science, it takes the right person to be in the right place at the right time to realise it is something special,” Mr Hunt told the Gazette, recalling his November 2011 discovery in the Megalong rainforest while bushwalking with other enthusiastic “fungi photographers”.
“It’s a million-to-one, it was really lucky, its flowers were sticking up over the leaf letter,” he said. “It’s similar to finding the Wollemi pine, it’s awesome. How often do you find something new?”
NSW Office of Environment and Heritage senior threatened species officer, Greg Steenbeeke, helped identify the new species, Thismia megalongensis (after the Megalong).
It’s hard to see — its small bright orange flowers grow on the forest floor and are smaller than a five cent piece — but they found more than 400 samples near a recreational reserve in Blackheath.
“It is amazing that we can find a plant that is an Australian strand from a very old lineage that has developed symbiotically with fungi over tens of millions of years, and has gone undetected right next to a large urban centre like Sydney,” Mr Steenbeeke said.
Mr Steenbeeke said the plant belonged to a lineage of plants, commonly known as fairy lanterns, that first sprouted around the time of the dinosaurs.
A biologist from the Netherlands, Dr Vincent Merckx, did genetic testing on the plant, revealing the closest relative lived more than 4000 kilometres away in New Zealand.
“The connection suggests it has evolved in isolation for a very long time, and genetic research on the plant’s ‘molecular clock’ — a means of determining the time since separation from a common ancestor — suggests that these species actually separated from each other in the last 400,000 years,” Mr Steenbeeke said.
Initial reports suggested the plant gave off a fungal odour when fresh and started to smell like rotting fish as it decayed but Mr Hunt said it was unfair to call his discovery a stinky flower.
“It only smells of old fish - not rotten - as it starts to decompose. There is a slight fungal fragrance to them when they are in flower, but you really have to get right in there to smell it.
“These are really interesting plants as they do not photosynthesise ... they are a parasite on a fungi that is in a symbiotic relationship with other plants.
“It is from these other plants and the fungi that the Thismia get their carbohydrates and probably their nutrients as well. This is how they manage to live under the leaf litter in the forest with no light and still manage to grow and flower,” he said.
Mr Hunt said he was concerned for the flower’s future and aspects like climate change, an extension of the road, any alteration to the land use by council, drainage issues and bushfires “could be devastating”.
While about 90 per cent of plants native to eastern Australia have been identified and named, a couple of dozen new species were discovered every year, Mr Steenbeeke said.