Seedy

These are the seed pods of a common local plant, Brown Kurrajong, photographed today on our afternoon walk to the lookout. Its botanic name, Commersonia bartramii, was given to it in 1759 by Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish  'father of modern taxonomy'. That was 11 years before the first European explorers (Cook, Banks etc) sighted the east coast of Australia. The naming by Linnaeus was possible because the plant grows from southern China through south-east Asia to northern and eastern Australia. In Lennox Head, we are at about the southern end of its range. The plant sample that Linnaeus worked on, in giving the name, seems to have been provided by the German/Dutch botanist Rumphius, working in what is now Indonesia.