Wendy had asked me to call when a rare vine started developing flowers. I was worried that I would miss it and the opportunity would be lost.
The rare vine located on Barratt Creek, a tributary to the Daintree River, had been recognised as unique for a few decades but it remained taxonomically undescribed and hence scientifically unknown and un-named. I was nervous of not seeing the small mauve flowers developing in time to enable their collection. Indeed when it did flower I was caught by surprise – a smaller vine in the canopy flowered rather than the larger vine that I had been regularly examining. Within days Wendy arrived to take samples as part of her taxonomic description which will lead to its official naming – Daintree Wisteria Vine (genus Callerya). Subsequently we have performed a survey of the river to determine the distribution of this vine. Incredibly it is restricted to an area of just 5 kilometres and only about a dozen individual plants are known.