by Barbara Radcliffe, Lecturer in Food Science, Regency College of TAFE, SA
WISENET Journal No. 20, September 1989, pp. 13-14
Ann Prescott is a contemporary botanist who is now branching out into a management career using her skills in negotiation and interpretation of science to people outside the scientific community.
She graduated with First Class Honours in Botany from the University of Adelaide. She worked in teaching and research positions at the University of Adelaide, the Waite Agricultural Research Institute, and the SA State Herbarium. Soon, however, she began to demonstrate her wide range of skills outside the laboratory by engaging in design work.
As Consultant Botanist to the National Trust of South Australia she designed a self guided nature trail walk on a property at Roachdale in the Adelaide hills. As well as siting the trail and preparing an interpretative brochure, she successfully lobbied the Department of Recreation and Sport to sponsor and build the trail. Her next project was the design and establishment of a highly acclaimed landscaped swamp system and bird aviary using indigenous reed and rush plant species not previously in cultivation.
Ann then turned from academia to the Department of Environment and Planning. Her work here has tended more and more to areas of communication such as preparation of policy on "Communicating with the Public" for the national Parks and Wildlife Service, lecturing to students in the Diploma in Parks Wildlife Management course at SA College of Advanced Education, and the implementation of a major new award offered to farmers to promote land management and conservation of native vegetation. She is now involved in a major re-organisation and amalgamation of the plant and animal quarantine services in South Australia.
Ann is also an accomplished botanical illustrator. Although she is a largely self trained artist, her publication list includes nearly 100 illustrations in scientific publications such as Flora of Australia, Brunonia, and the Journal of tbe Adelaide Botanic Gardens.
In 1988 she achieved a major milestone in botanical illustration and communication when she published 'It's Blue with Five Petals'. This book is a 400 page field-guide to wildfiowers (both native and introduced) of the Adelaide region. It contains illustrations and descriptions of more than 1000 species, and its style exemplifies Ann's commitment to communication or translation of technical information to the non-specialist.
How many of us, who have had reasonable scientific education but no botanical expertise, have experienced frustration when trying to identify a plant from a standard botanical reference? If I wish to identify a pink orchid-like fiower found in the Adelaide hills, I might use my elderly (and positively user-hostile) copy of Black's Flora of South Australia. I would then need to negotiate a key of the family Orchidaceae that abounds with terms such as spicate, glabrous, orbicularcordate, galeate, labellum and sessile calli to reach the genus Caladenfa. Then there is another key to be tackled, this time considering the acuminate or caudate points of the sepals, whether the tip of the labellum is denticulate, or if the lateral sepals are very long and filiform. If I make it this far, I may decide that the flower is Caladenia carnea. How much easier it is to use 'It's Blue with Five Petals'! Once again there is a key to negotiate, but this is designed with the non-botanist in mind. The plants are divided into five colour coded sections depending on the colour of the flowers. So for our orchid we will go first to the section contairiing pink and red flowers. We then find the general fiower-shape by asking does it have from two to six petals, is it a daisy, a cluster, or none of the above? This will rapidly bring us to the following description: "small herbs with a single erect stem; orchids; these plants have five spreading petals, a sixth central petal (the tongue petal) is high modified in shape and colour, with bumps, fringes and hairs".
The plants are identified with both common and botanical names, and each is illustrated by clear and elegant line drawings.
Although the book will be of most use to South Australian residents or visitors, it provides an exemplary model for all of us of effective communication of scientific expertise to the person in the street (or in the bush!).
Ann's current description of herself is, "a merchant of ideas and an agent of change".
She is a prime example of how a scientific training can be used outside, as well as inside, the laboratory or herbarium. Talent for communicating technical information is a rare commodity, and Ann is using her talent to develop a "blossoming" career in management.