Euphrasia arguta – not sighted  for 100 years. Photo by Doug Binns

A routine  survey for threatened flora and fauna prior to harvesting has turned up a plant  thought to be extinct for more than 100 years.

Graham  Marshall, of Forests NSW Walcha office, was undertaking a field survey in  Nundle State Forest earlier this year when he found what at first appeared to  be Euphrasia ciliolate.

But the plant  had some differences, and he showed the population to Forests NSW flora  ecologist, Doug Binns, who recognised it as most likely being the long-lost Euphrasia arguta.

He had the find  confirmed by the specialist in the genus, Dr Bill Barker, chief botanist with  South Australia’s Department for Environment and Heritage.

“The plant is  a showy flowered annual of the foxglove family Scrophulariaceae from central New South Wales,” Dr Barker said.

“The species  has been considered extinct, as it has remained unknown for more than a century  since it was last recorded, again from Nundle, east of Tamworth, in June 1904.”

The plant was  first described by British botanist Robert Brown in 1810 from a collection he  made in 1804 on the north coast of NSW in mountains near the Paterson River, west of  Bulahdelah.

Doug Binns  said Forests NSW would now develop a conservation management plan for the  plant, which was in an area disturbed during fire control activities the  previous summer.

This article appears in the Spring 2008 edition of Bush Telegraph Magazine.