Our guest speaker for the October meeting was Tony Hosemans. Before speaking about his experiences with rare medicinal plants, Tony gave a brief outline of his diverse life before horticulture became his primary occupation. He worked at the National Bank and for the stockbrokers ECW Baillieu, working closely with Ted Baillieu. Tony and his wife then began a business together running tearooms.This required several new skills, including learning to make scones -- and how to make hundreds of thousands, over the years . It was here that he became a singing waiter.Many special interest groups came to the tearooms and included an American Randall White. With Randall he took a particular interest in sub-dividing Golden Seal seeds, obtained from Richters Herbs in Canada. Golden Seal is a natural anti-biotic, which was widely used in America for more than 200 years before penicillin was discovered and produced in commercial quantities. Randall's visions were probably before their time, particularly as Golden Seal is very slow growing; the seed can take up to 18 months in the ground to yield any usable growth. After some time, Randall White left the joint enterprise and moved to Queensland, taking some of the plants with him, but leaving many.Tony now operates a half-acre nursery at Warburton, where he grows a wide variety of rare medicinal plants, mostly in pots for convenience in managing their environment. There is growing interest in traditional medications, and many people enquire about Golden Seal. The plants grow naturally under larger trees and [like ginseng] prefer to be in the shade. They are very slow to mature, which explains the high cost of seeds. This long wait for a crop is similar to the maturing time of olives [7 years] and truffles [7 to 9 years].Another of Tony's natural medicinal plant interests is Black Cohosh. It is a perennial plant or herb, one of the buttercup family which shows white flowers and can grow to 2 1/2 metres tall. Extracts of its roots and stems have long been used as treatment for a wide range of disorders, particularly women's problems including PMT, menopause, etc. He also cultivates ginseng Siberian ginseng, cranberries and ginko bulbs and leaves for a range of medicinal uses.Tony concluded by a giving a brief glimpse of his other interests. In 2009 he started making smudge sticks from White Sage. They are gathered in bundles, lit and left for the smoke to cleanse the whole house. There is a strong demand for these sticks, and Tony supplies them to a shop in the Royal Arcade.And, to round off his list of talents, the "singing waiter" ended his talk with a delightful rendition of "Unforgettable".
