On Wednesday, November 13 the Weddin Community Native Nursery hosted an evening with Peter Olde OAM, at the Grenfell Hub.

Peter is a passionate collector and identifier of the Grevillea species Australia wide. He first became interested in the Grevillea due to its ability to attract native birdlife to his garden.

He has found many new species and collected over 5,000 specimens from across Australia.

Grevillea oldie was named in his honour.

Peter is the co-author of the three volume Grevillea book, which is now a very hard series to find and purchase copies of. They hope to complete a volume 4 on Grevillea Hybrids, of which there are about 600 species identified.

In 2020 Peter was awarded a Medal of the order of Australia for his service to Australian Native Flora.

He has made a large contribution to the knowledge of Australian native flora, which has led to him becoming an expert in this field, and particularly in his knowledge of the genus Grevillea.

Peter’s talk covered the discovery and identification of the new Grevillea species that have been found since the publication of the books in the 1990s.

It is amazing to think that there are new species of Grevillea still to be found. Peter loves the taxonomy of the Grevillea, that is how they are classified, particularly the details of their flowers and leaves, that makes them all so different.

He accompanied his enthusiastic talk with a wonderful array of photographs where he pointed out all the distinguishing features of the plant; and recalled where the species was actually found and any funny little stories about his discoveries along the way.

Noel Cartwright, our Nursery Patron, has been a good friend of Peter’s for over 30 years. It was lovely to hear them talk of their love and passion for our native plants, and that Peter was very willing to find time to travel to Grenfell to catch up with Noel and share his wealth of knowledge about Grevilleas to our community.