Bidwill of Wide Bay
A Botanist Cut Short
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2012.7Keywords:
John Carne Bidwill, Australian garden history, Wide Bay and Maryborough, plant breedingAbstract
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 use of Australian plants in European gardens and the colonial history of Sydney, New Zealand, Wide Bay and Maryborough. He may have been the first to introduce plant breeding into Australia. In a short life, and working in his spare time, he contributed more than many full-time and longer-lived horticulturists. This included discovering new species, crossing new hybrids (specific and inter-generic), and propagating and promulgating plants for the nursery trade and gardeners. His efforts are marked by his name gracing many Australian and New Zealand plants, exotic plant hybrids and modern suburbs of Sydney and Maryborough. This brief biography outlines Bidwill's time in Australasia and Queensland.
References
Mabberley, David, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation in Colonial NSW: The Work of Bidwill, J.C., Sydney's First Director’, Telopea 6 (4) (1996): 542.
The native orchid Dendrobium tetragronum was introduced to England in 1838 from Moreton Bay, possibly by Bidwill.
In 1838, Clovelly Watson's Bay (built in 1834 for Thomas Watson and named after a Devonshire 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 and Sydney. In 1848, Clovelly was bought by Henry Parker, private secretary to Sir George Gipps (Governor 1838°46 and Premier of New South Wales, 1856–57) and later, as Sir Henry, Governor himself. Parker married Emmeline Macarthur, the youngest daughter of pioneer John Macarthur, in 1843. Bidwill was on good terms with the Macarthurs and particularly Emmeline's brother, William. The Parkers enlarged Clovelly's garden, adding lots of exotic plants.
Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 543.
Rosebery, Windham & Tucker's ‘Chateau Tanunda’ brandy 1920s sign in Sydney's St James Railway station entry (east of Market Street, Sydney) may be the earliest neon sign in Sydney (or at least the earliest that survives).
Huth, John, ‘The Bunya Pine: The Romantic Araucaria of Queensland’, in Araucariaceae – Proceedings of the 2002 Araucariaceae Symposium, Araucaria – Agathis – Wollemia, Auckland, New Zealand, 14–17/3/2002, eds Rod Bieleski and Mike Wilcox (Auckland: International Dendrology Society, 2009), 271; Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’, 544; Mabberley, David, , ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’, Curtis's Botanical Magazine 18 (2000): 32.
Tom Petrie, of the bunya nut feast, cited in Halligan, Marion, ‘A Sufficiently Exciting Occupation’, in The Nature of Gardens, ed. Timms, Peter (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000).
Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 33 notes that in 1840, Petrie and Russell went looking for grazing land and the Bunya pine, but only found the land. Huth, ‘The Bunya Pine’: 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 pine seedlings 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 London in 1843 (after visiting the tree).
Bidwill's account was written in July 1841 and predates observations made in 1842 by German 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’: 544 also cites a letter by Bidwill, H.(his handwriting being difficult to decipher) published in Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science 1 (1842): 404Google Scholar and in the (London) Annual Magazine of Natural History 8 (1842): 439.
Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 546 says Hooker introduced him to Herbert. Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 37 says it was Brown who made the introduction. Both were eminent botanists, so whichever it was, this just strengthens the goodwill and integrity with which Bidwill was regarded by contemporaries at the top of their field.
Clough, Richard, ‘Mr Bidwill's Erythrina’. Australian Garden History 3 (4) (1992): 10.
http://www.hortuscamden.com/Bidwill. Accessed 20 February 2012.
Letter to William Macarthur. (source:http://www.hortuscamden.com/Araucariabidwillii) Accessed 20 February 2012.
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.
Clift, Tony, ‘John Carne Bidwill: Wide Bay's First Commissioner of Crown Lands’. In Mapping & Surveying/People/Bidwill (Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 2010)Google Scholar, http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/museum/articles_complete/people/bidwill.html. Accessed 20 February 2012. See also Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 552.
Clift, ‘John Carne Bidwill’.
Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 104–5. Charles Moore changed Dammara bidwillii to D. robusta, and this name was published with an illustration of the 1853 plant growing in the Sydney Botanic Gardens (25 feet high, grown from Bidwill's seed grown by Macarthur) in 1857. Dammara gets its genus name from the word damar, the South-East Asian word for natural copals, gums and resins used to caulk (waterproof) wooden sailing ships. Damars were crucial to making ships seaworthy. Dammara was later renamed as Agathis robusta.
Mabberley, ‘Bidwill of the Bunya Bunya’: 108; Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 553.
McKinnon, Firmin, Early Days of Maryborough (read by him before the Historical Society of 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.
Camden Park Nursery Group, ‘Plant Notes, Brachychiton bidwillii’.
http://www.hortuscamden.com/Hoya sp. Accessed 20 February 2012.
Mabberley, ‘Plant Introduction and Hybridisation’: 554.
Quoted by Olde, Peter and Marriot, Neil, The Grevillea Book (3 vols) (Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1994), 49.
Olde and Marriot, The Grevillea Book.
McKinnon, Early Days of Maryborough, 481.
McKinnon, Ross, ‘Colonial Plants: The Bunya Bunya Pine, Araucaria Bidwillii’. Australian Garden History 7 (4) (1996): 4.
Haebich, Anna, ‘Assimilating Nature: The Bunya Diaspora’, Queensland Review 10 (2) (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Tropical Pleasures – a focus on Queensland Gardens’ special issue, edited by Glenn Cooke: 47–58.
Clough, Richard, ‘Bidwill, John Carne’, The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, eds Aitken, Richard and Looker, Michael (Oxford: Oxford University Press & AGHS, 1992): 90–1.
http://www.hortuscamden.com/Bidwill. Accessed 20 February 2012.
Interestingly, the replica gravestone in Queen's Park, Maryborough was a gift of the Australasian Native Orchid Society – Wide Bay Group.
