Mabberley, Plant introduction and hybridisation in colonial NSW 
545 
Bowman's son Edward, the nephew of William and James Macarthur. The Macarthurs 
were, like Bidwill, originally from Devonshire. 
Bidwill did his own hybridizing experiments too, but where he did so has been 
somewhat obscure up until now, as he is not known to have had a permanent address 
in Sydney. It seems that at this time he began hybridizing amaryllids at Camden Park, 
the home of William Macarthur (Traub & Hannibal 1960), who was to become his close 
friend and supporter. It has been assumed that most of Bidwill's work must have been 
done there or, later, at the Botanic Gardens. From allusions in Bidwill's correspondence 
it seems that he was based some way out of Sydney and laterthere is reference to 
Clovelly, Watson's Bay. This house, named after a Devonshire village, had been built 
as a 'marine villa' in 1834 for Thomas Watson and was leased in 1838 by Hannibal 
Macarthur, King's brother-in-law, who bought it in 1840 (Crosson 1989). A drawing of 
about this date signed '] Me' is preserved in the Mitchell Libraryshowing the house 
before the Norfolk Island pine, prominent in F. [C.] Terry's 1853 sketch of The Gap 
published in Landscape Scenery Illustrating Sydney and Port Jackson, New South Wales 
(1855), was any size. After the failure of Macarthur's bank in 1843, the estate was 
eventually bought in 1848 by Governor Gipps's private secretary, Henry Watson Parker 
(later Sir Henry and Governor of NSW), who married John Macarthur's youngest 
daughter Emmeline in 1843. They enlarged the property and developed an extensive 
garden of exotics; moreover amaryllid crosses like those made by Bidwill are associated 
with Lady Parker (see below). Although Bidwill notes in his 'Cape Amaryllids', a letter 
to the Gardener's Chronicle (27 July 1850, p. 470) that he first raised seedlings of what 
became known as 'Brunsvigia rtiultiflora hybrids' (X Amarygia bidwillii (? Amaryllis 
belladonna x Brunsvigia orientalis) = X A. parkeri) in February 1841, they did not flower 
until March 1847. Where were they meanwhile? It has not been possible so far to 
confirm that Clovelly was for part of the time Bidwill's base but what evidence there 
is seems to point to it. The house was demolished in 1903 but Norfolk Island pines 
from the garden survive at the north end of what is now Robertson Park. 
Bidwill claimed to have crossed Amaryllis belladonna with species in several other 
genera of Amaryllidaceae — Ammocliaris, Boophone and Brunsvigia and even Haemanthus 
coccineus, though failing with species of Lycoris and Nerine. In November 1846 (before 
any of the 'B. multiflora hybrids' had flowered), Macarthur’^ wrote to Bidwill 'your 
curious bulb from a seedling belladonna has (produced] two leaves this year like an 
Haemanthus'. If this was in fact a 'Brunsvigia multiflora hybrid' and not an Amaryllis- 
Haemanthus cross, the remark would support the contention of Hannibal (1994) that 
the hybrids were crosses between Amaryllis belladonna and Cybistetes longifolia, which 
has distichous leaves adpressed to the ground like those of Haemanthus spp. In the 
catalogue of plants growing at Camden Park in 1845 'Amaryllis longiflora' (? Cybistetes 
longifolia) is listed, though it is not in the 1843 edition but seems to have been available 
earlier to at least Alexander McLeay at Elizabeth Bay. If the parentage is thus, the 
hybrids should be referred to the hybrid genus X Amarisfetes, but so far the lengthy 
procedure to repeat the alleged cross has not been completed. The plants, which are 
now grown all over the world (often incorrectly spelling Bidwill's name), were first 
distributed commercially by the Sydney firm of J. Baptist and Sons in the 1860s. 
Return to England 
Bidwill sailed for England via Cape Horn in February 1843 with a case of plants of 
his own and one from Camden as well as six parrots, four of them little cockatoos. 
His plant-case was protected only with wire mesh unlike the Camden one which 
had bars and many of the box's panes were lost‘L He had living bunya-bunya pines 
