Talking Plants

Finally from Tasmania, a garden plant you'll find in cooler climate gardens throughout the world - Winter Bark,  Drimys winteri ,   at Crawleighwood, near Hobart. This public garden and nursery is packed with plants from all over the world, but particularly those with a Gondwanan connection (mostly southern hemisphere). The Winter Bark has that connection through South America and is often - inaccurately - described as 'primitive' because the flowers have very simple whorls of male, female and display parts, and the wood lacks specialised water-carrying cells called vessels. It shares all these features with other members of the plant family Wintereaceae, which branches off early in your typical flowering plant tree of life.  Calling the genus or the family primitive is no longer considered either helpful or accurate. That's because all flowering plants in existence today are just as old, or young, as all other species of flowering plant. Even saying they are 'basal