Costa Unveils University Medicinal Plants to Garden Lovers

COSTA GEORGIADIS of GARDENING AUSTRALIA: If you're a gardener you know the power of plants to make us feel great when we're working with them and taste great when we're eating them. But many plants can also have powerful inherent properties that can be harnessed for our needs. Think about things like coffee and what about quinine and even aspirin that was originally derived from willow tree bark. I'm at Southern Cross University in Lismore New South Wales. And spread out across the campus is an extraordinary collection of plants for study and research. It's a plant nerd's paradise and the perfect place for researchers to explore the powerful properties of plants. This here is the herbarium. Think of it as like a big plant library. There must be thousands of specimens in here. I can't wait to have a look around but I think I better ask first. Peter Mouatt is a pharmacognosist. That's a scientist who studies the chemistry of natural compounds. Peter, I knew I'd find you deep in the herbarium but tell me a little bit about this title of yours pharmacognosist.

PETER MOUATT of SOUTHERN CROSS UNIVERSITY: Pharmacognosy is the science of understanding plants and plant drugs. And so here we have a collection in the herbarium of plants that have been used historically for foods and herbs and medicines. So we look at their chemistry and their relationships and we find some pretty surprising interesting things. So we can go and have a look at some of those if you're interested.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: Oh yeah count me in for a surprise or two. Yeah Yeah Okay Okay Which way? This way?

PETER MOUATT: This way. Yeah. Like the garden the purpose of the herbarium collection is to assist in the study and particularly the correct identification of plant species. Yeah we'll have a look at this one.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: Oh okay. That's a rosemary Um what's the surprise here?

PETER MOUATT: Well the surprising thing here in this case is the name of it. So we know it as rosemary. It's a common herb But what they've found is that when they've looked at the genetics it's closely related to the sage the salvia which is a very big genus of plants. So it's more than it's about 15% of all the mint family. So this has been found now to be part of that same genus of plants.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: So what's its new name?

PETER MOUATT: Its new name is Salvia Rosemarinus. I mean it's the same plant to us. We all know rosemary but the official name and designation and the relationships are changing and that's something we try and keep up with and understand.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: So the name change with rosemary, is it a one-off or are the changes more widespread?

PETER MOUATT: No there's definitely changes much more widespread. So the whole of flowering plants or angioperms, we're relooking at a lot of the relationships 'cause a lot of traditional plant naming and classification is based on their flowers and their morphology their leaf shape. We have situations where you have sort of convergent evolution. So plants have developed similar forms and traits depending on the environment they might be growing in. And so what we thought might have been closely related we're actually now understanding different relationships.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: It's great to see plant people diving deep and using this new technology to to take our knowledge to the next level.

PETER MOUATT: Yeah, and to an extent genetics allows us to actually look back deep in time to the relationships between plants because you know they've been evolving over millions of years on the earth and that's giving us new insight. And the genetic identification of plants can also reveal their extraordinary deep history.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: I was having a look at this and when I smelt it, it's got a really strong scent. What is this plant?

PETER MOUATT: This is an interesting one. So this is actually a native licorice Glycyrrhiza acanthocarpa. Mostly it grows around the riverland in Victoria into South Australia. It's most closely related to the other licorice from northern China. So this is like really isolated in southern Australia, not many people are aware that we actually have a native licorice. And that separation based on the genetics appears to have been about 2.8 million years ago. And it seems that the way that it got here based on the fact that it's fruit have are quite spiky little things is that it was probably carried here by birds that do the annual migration have actually picked up some of these fruit and sort of carried it here millions of years ago and it's become established and obviously adapted to the environment here.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: Along with their ancestral pedigrees, the scientific study of traditional uses of plants is a focus for research by Professor John Wardle.

PROFESSOR JON WARDLE of the National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine at Southern Cross University: All right, this is our medicinal citrus section that actually has a lot more medicinal history and use than most people would probably realise. Look at this.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: What exactly is this fruit?

JON WARDLE: Well this is an orange of course but it's probably not the orange that most people would know. It's called a bitter orange. Used in a lot of cultures traditionally for for medicinal purposes but this orange has been specifically bred for all those things we don't usually like in oranges and food. Bitterness, sourness, really good stuff.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: I love bitterness and sourness. Can I give it a taste?

JON WARDLE: You go for it.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: Oh that's something that I grew up with. You know lemon and Greek go hand in hand. Oh here goes. I'm keen, I love bitter. It's a really thin skin isn't it?

JON WARDLE: It comes on quite thin and and that's because you know the the sort of things that we usually think of in pith um which are those you know bitter compounds the pectins uh they're kind of hidden in the orange itself. But as you chew more and more on that on that pectin and that that sort of fibrous compound, the chewier it will get, the more bitter it will get. Yeah. Quite quite different right?

COSTA GEORGIADIS: Yeah. It's good.

JON WARDLE: It's good. It's tangy. It's bitter. It gives you that. And it tastes good for you right? So you know that bitterness, that sourness, you know compliments that sweetness.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: Yeah. And see oh I want more.

JON WARDLE: And what's really interesting about this is that bitter taste uh has a lot of really interesting compounds that support digestion. And traditionally that's what bitterness is used for.

COSTA GEORGIADIS: Growing up Greek, bitter was a big part of it. Lemon was involved in in so many foods, but also bitter greens, Horta, such a staple at every meal. And it got you used to that that that it wasn't all about sweet and salty.