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The Corroboree

3rdI

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I am going on a plant hunt for a school assignment which requires me to pick 5 plants from the same Family and identify these plant to the species level using keys. I live in SE Melb and was wondering if anyone knows of Solanaceae members I could go out and collect, within driving distance dont think im willing to go further than south gippsland/gippsland. Apparently D. Stramonium or inoxia are out there. I already have a Brugmansia sanguinea which I collected from a neighbour's garden and another brug yet to be identified on the way. Can anyone help me find a few more samples?

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go hunt around, and remember if your desperate you can include, tomatoes, potatoes, and chillies.

keep an eye out for weedy solanaceae, such as the nightshades.

there are some brugmansia arboreas in city parks in melbourne, but for the purposes of your assignment, try and get a plant from different genus for each sample to mix it up a bit. Solanaceae is a huge and very important family in econonmic botany, so you shouldnt have any problems finding some.

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Sooo many online tools to help with such tasks. The Atlas of Living Australia has previously been a bit buggy- but is improving all the time. You can search for any taxa or taxonomic grouping in a geographic location.

To have a go, check out - http://www.ala.org.au/species-by-location/

As mentioned sooo many Solanaceae to choose from. Why not hunt down native members of this family near you?

Good luck.

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Thats what im asking for, either native or introduced it doesn't matter. I was just wondering if anyone has seen many Solanaceae near the SE melb area.

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My understanding is that there are 7 Brugmansia species - can you access 6/7 around Melbourne? If you can, good on you. I suspect that I would struggle to achieve this in the subtropics.

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My understanding is that there are 7 Brugmansia species - can you access 6/7 around Melbourne? If you can, good on you. I suspect that I would struggle to achieve this in the subtropics.

there are way more than seven species. but yes you should be able to get about 5 from around melbourne, if i think about public places.

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i think you will find most brugs in melbourne to be cultivars and hard to key out, many are hybrids. if you need 6 species from the same genus, can only think of Solanum

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Yeah I guess maybe ill have to go for another genus then. Oh well I will still have a B. sanguinea and another brug turned into a nice herbarium

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add, brunfelsia pauciflora, solandra maxima, petunia, physalis, cestrum, solanum dulcamara, or change the family to, malvaceae (so you can collect sidas if they are around) or poaceae (were there is a serious chance to find 7 different ones, within a small walk!).

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^^ The Poaceae can be quite challenging to ID - microscope and specialist taxonomic skills often needed. Likewise the Juncaceae and Cyperaceae. But there are lots of them and common/easy to identify species might be worth gathering for your assignment.

good luck.

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Myrtaceae would also be quite fun and easy to collect, if your looking for ease of collection.

i dont think collecting all brugs would suit the assignment anyway. Let yourself be challenged and, as i was trying to hint, be creative.

i certainly understand your motivation with trying to keep it within your interest area, but have fun with your assignments and be open, its amazing the path some things can take you.

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You all missed the second post. Haha it needs to be within one genus, so families such as myrtaceae, poaceae, proteaceae etc cannot be submitted, also need to be identified to species level. However I have another assignment which onky requires me to id the family name of 5 specimens which is easy and your suggestions have been noted. And much appreciated. So where are thise brugmansias?

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I read your posts. There are lots of opportunities within the Myrtaceae or the other families that have been mentioned to gather 5 or 6 species within a single genus - all close to your home. Good examples of these include Eucalyptus, Cyperus, Poa and Juncus.. As raised by others in this thread I doubt that the genus Brugmansia will be suitable for your assignment (because of extensive hybridisation and the difficulties gathering the required number of true species)..

Happy collecting..

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