Hunting the Wild Fringe-Lily

My nine-year-old daughter and I walk through a patch of open woodland in a wild back corner of Danthonia, a Bruderhof community of two hundred people in the New England tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. Most of the houses are clustered, village-like, at the southern end of the property, while six thousand acres of paddocks, woodlands, hills, creeks, and gullies lie to the north and west, inviting us to explore. Our pace is slow, and our eyes scan the ground. We are “hunting the wild fringe-lily,” as we like to say – or, more precisely, we are looking for a small purple flower called the common fringe-lily (Thysanotus tuberosus), which despite the “common” in its name is actually an endangered species. It has three purple petals, opulently fringed with long tassels. Hard to miss if they’re around. We know we have seen it here before, but that was before we knew it was endangered, and before I carried a high-resolution digital camera in my jeans pocket at all times (I was a late adopter of the mobile phone). Now, our goal is to find the fringe-lily again, and this time to photograph it. Today it eludes us. After a few hours, we give up and turn for home.

Photograph by Donal McKernan. Used by permission.

But we are not disheartened; we’ve stopped to examine the scaly bark of an apple gum (a species of tree native to Southeastern Australia, named by European settlers for their resemblance to apple trees). We’ve seen a Russula persanguinea (a pinkish fungus with a crackled texture, that looks like an English muffin). An Australian golden orbweaver (Trichonephila edulis) has danced for us in her giant web that spans twelve feet between two eucalyptus trees. We found a nest so intricate and well crafted that it looked like a tiny basket; the handiwork of a busy little bird. Was it the rufous whistler, a little brownish-black fellow with a tidy white neck patch and an impressive repertoire of songs? Or maybe the superb fairywren, with his iridescent blue crown and ear tufts? Maybe something else, who knows? We’ve whispered a quick hello into a hollow stump – a weather-grayed, helical tower of driftwood –where a family of brush-tailed possums is known to live. Other times we’ve seen their round, pale eyes looking out through the dark cracks. Not today. We have met an eastern snake-necked turtle making deliberate progress up the muddy bank of a farm dam, head protruding asymmetrically from below the overhang of its shell. This is a side-necked turtle bending its head sideways around its shell, its neck being too long to pull inside. We poked a stick into a large, twiggy hole, causing a huge bulldog ant to come out and latch on to the stick with his formidable sawlike mandibles. We photographed the ant, later to discover that it belongs to an undescribed species in the genus Myrmecia. We consider this a successful hunt. We’ll be back another time for the fringe-lily.

It is thought that 86 percent of species on earth have not yet been described (given a scientific name), which may seem astounding in light of the centuries of hard work by naturalists and taxonomists. On the other hand, it’s not surprising at all. A conservative estimate puts the number of species on earth at 8.6 million. That’s a very big number, but really how could anyone know? You can’t count what you can’t see. The number might actually be much higher. In our part of the world, the human population is relatively sparse, meaning that local lifeforms have not been extensively observed; we could be in a perfect spot to discover a new species. To discover a new species is a quiet hope of ours.

Photograph by Donal McKernan. Used by permission.

How, you might ask, do we know that the bulldog ant we photographed is undescribed? We know because two experts told us. Who are they? gelkiu and Daniel Kurek. We know little about them except that they are very, very keen on ants. Daniel is especially interested in Myrmeciinae (Bull Ants), and gelkiu is a member of Entomological Society of Victoria. So, these are ant people. We trust their opinions on our ant. Daniel even congratulated us on the photo we took, so we like him even more. He is almost a friend. Where did he see our photo? On an app called iNaturalist.

Because of such apps, millions of people go outside every day and look very closely at the natural world. It is also a corner of the internet where earnest collaboration and goodwill seem to be the order of the day. United in our goal of getting the right ID on each observation, any differences we may have are unimportant.

As time goes by, I have noticed something I would never have thought possible even a few years ago; that I can walk through a paddock naming every wildflower and moth I see, even while keeping my phone in my pocket. I am internalizing the names of living things that I have learned. All of these names are manmade, of course; they have changed and will change again. Still, knowing the name of a plant or insect makes it feel more like a friend. Now I am always surrounded by friends. Probably this is why God told Adam to name every living thing.

Photograph by Donal McKernan. Used by permission.

The iNaturalist app has a feature that allows users to enter the coordinates of a specific geographic region, in order to study the wildlife of a particular place. In March of last year, I entered the boundary of Danthonia and called the project the Danthonia Biodiversity Survey. Perhaps a little grandiose, but little did I realize that in less than a year, the project would grow to include more than six thousand observations of more than 1,700 species by twenty-four observers. Little did I know that schoolteachers would get inspired to hold a “beastathon,” involving their students in recording and identifying everything from birds to lizards to slime molds, or that several times a week, a child would run up to me holding a beetle or a moth or a skink, asking, “Donal, can you identify this for me?” Looking at a map of northern New South Wales in the app, Danthonia appears as a solid mass of pins, each representing an observation.

Does that mean we are a hotspot of biodiversity? Or do we just have a higher density of obsessive romantics closely observing the grass, water, trees, and sky around us? To me it’s not important. What is important is that we are part of an insanely beautiful and complex world; that we are watching it, listening to it, and learning from it; that my children are as excited about it as I am, maybe more. We can never be good stewards of God’s creation unless we take the time to notice it first.

On Sunday, we’ll be off again hunting the wild fringe-lily.