Endemic flora D-G

Botanical Name: Lomatia tasmanica (E)
Commonly Called: Kings lomatia
Botanical Family: Proteaceae
Grows: This rare and endangered small tree grows typically 2 to 4m high, but in deep forest may grow as high as 6 to 8m. It usually grows with a single trunk with foliage atop, or a slanting trunk with a few vertical branches. Some plants have been found to have spread by rhizomatous growth.
Foliage: The young stems and buds are densely pilose. The short stalked, shiny, green leaves are alternate and more dense at the end of the branches. They grow from 10 to 18cm long by 2.5 to 4cm wide with 7 to 10 pairs of lobed or sharply-toothed leaflets.
Flora: The flowers grow in pairs in loose terminal racemes which are usually shorter or a litle longer than the upper leaves. The dull crimson perianth segments are thick, fleshy and glabrous. When closed the flowers are ~8mm long and when the 4 petal like sepals are fully open they are ~10mm in diameter. The underside of 3 of the recurved sepals have ‘V’ shaped pollen sacs, bright yellow when coated with pollen. The flowers feature a green, central, recurved gynophore which matures to pale pink.
Flowering Season: Flowers usually appear in mid to late summer, but not every year for some plants.
Fruiting body: This species is probably a triploid, because it has been found to have 33 chromosomes, whereas 4 other Lomatia species have been found to each have 22 chromosomes. Hence no fruit has ever been seen.
How and where it grows: It was originally found by tin miner, Denny King (hence the common name), near Coxs Bight in the South West in 1934. In 1965 he found it in another location and his sample of the flowers and foliage enabled Winifred Curtis to describe the species in 1967. The current location is kept secret and access is strictly controlled due to nearby Phytophthora cinnamomi, foot rot, infestation which would be deadly to the Lomatia tasmanica. It grows as a small tree or tall shrub 5 to 8m high along creek lines in mixed forest over a distance of 1.2km in several clusters, in all totalling fewer than 500 stems, and all plants are genetically identical, i.e. they are clones. This suggests that all these clusters were once one plant spreading by rhizomatous root growth. Then, later its roots were possibly severed by the roots of falling trees, thus causing the clusters. Fossil leaves of Lomatia tasmanica found in the south west have been dated at 43,600 years old and with the plant being a clone, together with the rhizomatous growth, there is a suggestion that it may be the oldest living plant in the world.
Ken Gillander, the proprietor of Wood Bank Nursery south of Hobart, in ~1985, during a visit to the South West plant in the wild, obtained propagation material. He remembers that he succeeded in grafting Lomatia tasmanica onto Lomatia tinctoria another Tasmanian endemic species.and a number of plants have successfully been grown by this technique. Cutting material from these grafted plants has successfully been grown into beautiful plants and another Hobart nursery is understood to be successfully growing this plant using cutting material from grafted plants.
The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens (RTBG), having succeeded in propagating plants from material collected during a visit to the South West in the 1995, have been working mainly with cuttings material from those cuttings grown plants (clones of the plant in the wild) to produce a conservation collection of nearly 50 plants of various ages. They are now, 2024, also working with cuttings from grafted plants.
Where found: On request, Lomatia tasmanica may be seen in the RTBG in their conservation section. A Hobart area nursery also has plants in a private collection. At least one known property has a mature plant grown by Ken Gillanders. This 3-4m high plant grows on the top of a bank of a small river and is still very healthy and flowers each year. It may be more than 25 years old.
Other notes: Requiring moist well drained soil and probably fairly constant humidity this lovely, rare, open shrub may be carefully pruned to maintain height and/or shape. Propagation by semi-hardwood tip and stem cuttings, dipped in Clonex gel, with each piece in its own pot of sterile cutting mix, low bottom heat in a mist propagator has proven to be the best way to replicate the species.