In May 1934, the bushman, tin miner, painter and amateur botanist Charles Denison King was hiking through the foothills of the Bathurst Ranges near his home at Melaleuca, when he stumbled on something unusual. A grove of willowy, shrub-like trees with leathery green leaves, toothed like holly, nestled on the banks of a creek gully. King had spent years roaming the button grass plains, rainforest gullies, and wild mountains of south-west Tasmania, but had never seen anything like this. 

Thirty-one years later, he found another colony of the same plant and sent specimens of its sucker-like roots and dark, purplish flowers to the eminent botanist Dr Winnifred Curtis, at the University of Tasmania, who confirmed it was new to science. Genetic analysis revealed it was a triploid, having three sets of chromosomes instead of the usual two, meaning it was sterile and could only reproduce from root sprouts, or when branches touched the forest floor and sprouted roots. 

In 1998, fossilised leaves of the same plant were found at Melaleuca Inlet and carbon-dated to between 43,600 and 135,000 years old. The curious little shrub Deny King had stumbled on as a young man was one of the oldest living plants in the world. 

Lomatia tasmanica, common-name King’s lomatia, or King’s holly, in honour of its discoverer, is a living relic of a prehistoric past. Like the Wollemi Pine in NSW, L. tasmanica is protected by an Act of Parliament and its precise location kept an official secret to protect it from fungal contamination and unscrupulous plant hunters. There are thought to be only 500 plant stems clustered around 1.2 kilometres of rainforest gully, meaning one catastrophic bushfire could eradicate it forever. Although L. tasmanica is incredibly resilient, having survived eons of climate fluctuations, researchers at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens have found it difficult to propagate. It grows slowly: cuttings take up to 12 months to root, and growth is about two centimetres per 60 years. 

It is also very sensitive to disturbance in moisture and humidity, since its natural habitat is the tangled understorey of the rainforest canopy. Thus, unlike the Wollemi pine, you can’t buy this piece of prehistory to plant in your garden. L. tasmanica remains as wild and elusive as the thylacine that once prowled beneath its leaves. 

. . .

I first learned the story of this extraordinary plant after a friend gave me a silk scarf as a birthday present. The pattern was a symphony of the forest floor: silver leaves with sharp, serrated edges danced above tender roots, coiling out of the dark like woody veins. The artist was Deborah Wace, a printmaker, amateur botanist, history lover, ecological activist, teacher and musician. On the walls of her studio on the 9th floor of a Murray St, Hobart, tower, in between stunning views of kunanyi, hangs a visual feast of orchids, lichens, mosses, ferns and flowers, photographed at high resolution from original pressed and arranged specimens. My eye was drawn to several exquisitely detailed and sensual drypoint etchings of Tasmanian orchids, some up to two metres tall, which Wace has studied and drawn under a microscope. 

“When these works are displayed, larger than life,” she explained, “we walk among them as equals, a living species, deserving of respect.” 

Wace’s childhood was spent collecting and studying plants alongside her father, Dr Nigel Wace, a botanist at the Australian National University in Canberra whose extensive research and conservation work on the ecosystems of south-western Tasmania informed the High Court decision to protect the Lower Gordon and Franklin River catchments, and contributed to the area being designated a Wilderness World Heritage Area by UNESCO in 1982. 

After completing a degree in fine art, Deborah Wace moved to Lune River on the edge of the Southwest National Park, where she spent the next 20 years raising a family, collecting specimens (sustainably and with permission), and drawing the vast network of plant communities that inhabit the wild button-grass plains. Her intricate specimen arrangements, pressed on paper, mounted in floating glass box frames, or printed on beautiful silks, chiffon, and linen, recall the scientific herbaria of the early European explorers. 

“This early scientific, historical, botanical genre is one of the oldest genres of art in human knowledge,” she muses. What do we see painted in the prehistoric caves of Lascaux, or in ancient Aboriginal meeting places? “Animals and plants!” she beams.   

In 2017 Wace won a Churchill Fellowship to travel to Paris, Florence, and London to examine the botanical collections from the D'Entrecasteaux and Baudin expeditions to Tasmania first hand. Her goal was to develop her artwork and fabric design, examine the interplay between art and science, and draw international attention to the rich history and ecological diversity of Tasmania’s threatened wild places. 

“It was a dream come true,” she says of her visit to Kew Herbarium in London, where she was also able to see some of her father’s botanical collections, including a plant named after him, Agrostis wacei, a species of grass. 

“[My father] was very familiar with these quiet halls and cupboards at Kew. It [was] very special indeed to find part of him [there].” 

. . .

Deborah Wace volunteers at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens with the orchid conservation program to help germinate endangered species, which are grown and nurtured in the laboratory before being planted in the wild to rejuvenate the population. It was there that she was introduced to L. tasmanica for the first time. She had seen pictures before, but “to meet this plant in person, nicely clipped and bunching, was a privilege”. 

Wace had met Deny King at his home in Meleleuca in the late 1980s on a sea-kayaking trip, and “knowing his daughters and granddaughter, gave this rare plant a personal connection for me”. 

She was fascinated by the history and uniqueness of the plant, its resilience in a harsh environment. The artist in her was also intrigued by the unusual appearance of the leaves, which can look feathery and light, or sharp and metallic, like shark skin. “The shape of the leaves lends itself to the kind of printmaking I do and translates well onto fabric,” she says. 

Wace’s advocacy for wild and threatened species was known to the curators at the botanical gardens, who granted her special permission to press and draw a few precious leaves from this critically endangered plant. “They were most helpful and delighted with the end result of silk, cotton and linen materials showcasing their precious subject.” 

As with the rest of her botanical art, her goal went beyond capturing a pleasing aesthetic. “I want people to know and to tell the story of this ancient plant – to wear it or live with it in their home,” as a reminder of the wildness that still, for now, exists. 

Wace shows me her printing press, a beautiful antique found by chance (or fate) in an op shop. As I watch her demonstrate her process of inking up the perspex plates, arranging the botanical cuttings, and slowly cranking the wheel to roll the delicate paper through the press, it occurs to me that this machine is itself a relic from a now ancient era in human history when the publishing revolution set the European Renaissance and Enlightenment in motion, in turn bringing scientists and explorers like Joseph Banks and J. J. H. de Labillardiere to Tasmania. As Deborah peels back the moistened paper from the inked impression, with all the excitement of a paleo-botanist lifting fossilised leaves from a muddy creek bed, these mundane fragments of the forest floor are transformed into something more meaningful – where art, nature and science meet.  

More about Deborah Wace and her work can be seen at deborahwace.com.

Rayne Allinson is a writer and teacher with a PhD in History from the University of Oxford. She has worked and travelled in many parts of the northern hemisphere, and is now based in southern Tasmania. 

Photographers Deborah Wace, Owen Fielding and Joe Shemesh.