IF YOU’RE walking around the Australian National Botanic Gardens on the weekend, take a look at the newly unveiled interpretive panel in honour of Canberra centenarian Max Day for his work unravelling the mystery of the Scribbly Gum tree’s scribbles. 

A respected ecologist and entomologist whose scientific publications span 74 years, Dr Day conducted his original studies on the Scribbly Gum scribbles at the Gardens.

“Scribbly Gum scribbles have long fascinated people and have become an Australian icon.  I’m sure most people recognise the Scribbly’s scribbles in the popular children’s story ‘Snugglepot and Cuddlepie’,” Dr Judy West, executive director of the Gardens says.

“This panel recognises the dedication of a man who has helped scientists discover at least 15 moth species which produce distinctive individual scribbles on at least 20 different eucalypt species.”

Dr Day and his colleagues, she explained, have shown that the scribbles seen on the smooth bark of Scribbly Gums are the feeding tracks of the larvae of a minute moth which lays its eggs between the old and new bark.

At 100, Dr Day is the Australian Academy of Science’s oldest living Fellow. He worked with the CSIRO national insect collection and was the first chief of the CSIRO Division of Forest Research.

The last of his papers which he co-authored, on the biology of the Australian scribbly gum moth, was published when he was 97 years old.

To view the interpretive panel follow the signs from the Australian National Botanic Gardens car park to the Eucalypt Lawn.