Australia Day honours: Conservationist’s everlasting passion for plants continues to grow with OAM announced

Infectious enthusiasm for wildflowers, native grasses and other wonders of the natural world inspired a prominent SA botanist to self-publish a popular guide book — on Australia Day, Ann Prescott will become a member of the Order of Australia.

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Infectious enthusiasm for wildflowers, native grasses and other wonders of the natural world inspired a prominent South Australian botanist to self-publish a popular guide book and run countless workshops.

On Saturday, Ann Prescott, 66 of Myrtle Bank will be awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her service to conservation and the environment.

Her passion for plants can be traced back to the age of three at the moment when her mother Josephine Prescott, now 94, showed her a beautiful bough of wattle in bloom, hanging over a fence by the footpath.

“I remember her showing me a wattle in flower and telling me what it was,” Ms Prescott said.

“It just grew from there, it was something that was in me. I've been very lucky I've been able to make an interest into a career.”

Her mother was working and studying horticulture at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute when she married John R. Prescott, physicist and later Professor at the University of Adelaide. (His father, Ann’s grandfather was Professor James A. Prescott (1890—1987), soil scientist and Director of the Waite).

Ms Prescott graduated from the same University with first class honours in botany. She found work as a taxonomist at the State Herbarium and performed various roles in the Environment Department from 1981 to 1993 before stepping out on her own as a private consultant.

She left to pursue a growing interest in grasslands, which were then poorly understood and appreciated.

Australia Day Honours recipient Ann Prescott of Myrtle Bank, who will be awared an OAM for service to conservation and the environment, at Adelaide University Waite Campus, Thursday, January 24, 2019. (AAP Image/ Brenton Edwards)

As part-time scientist for the South Australia Temperate Native Grasslands Project at the World Wide Fund for Nature and Save the Bush, 1995-2001, she changed all of that.

“Grasslands are very rich in diversity and they support a whole range of animals and birds that don't survive in other habitats,” Ms Prescott said.

“Grassland also makes an absolutely stunning base for grazing, if you graze properly, because there's always something growing and something flowering … so there's good economic reasons to get native grasses back into your pastures as well as the conservation value.”

Later she returned to a role in the Department as Bush Management Advisor for the Adelaide Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resource Management Board.

She continues to run Plant Identification and Native Grass Identification workshops with Trees for Life SA but is best known for her self-published book, It's Blue with Five Petals: Wildflowers of the Adelaide Region, first published in 1988, revised 1994 and the Second Edition was published in 2012. A separate Kangaroo Island Field Guide was published in 1995.

The facebook page @ItsBlueWithFivePetals shares the message with a wider audience.

“The natural world on which we all depend is such a marvellous, complicated, and intricate machine,” Ms Prescott said.

“There are consequences as we continue to undo the ‘nuts and bolts’ and replace moving parts with non-genuine items. Eventually it will stop sustaining us.”