Future Events
Talks are held at the Zoology Benham Building, 346 Great King Street, behind the Zoology car park by the Captain Cook Hotel. Use the main entrance of the Benham Building to get in and go to the Benham Seminar Room, Rm. 215, 2nd floor. Please be prompt as we have to hold the door open.
Trips leave from the Department of Botany car park.
Ring of Fire: Volcanoes and Plants around the Pacific.
Wednesday 13th of February 2019, 05:20 PM (1 month from now)
Contact: Gretchen Brownstein | brownsteing@landcare.research.co.nz
Speaker: Peter Johnson, Landcare Research.
Volcanoes: ancient to active, with or without fumes, steam, scoria, sparks, ash, lava … what places for plants to live!
Over the years I have found myself scrambling, botanising, and photographing upon the slopes and sometimes the summits of solidified or eroding magma mountains. Most of these have risen up from the 'ring of fire', and my retrospective journey will take us clockwise around the margin of the Pacific Plate. We shall start among gentians on the highest point of the Auckland Islands, rest briefly on the basalt hills of Dunedin, then head north for a dose of younger volcanic fields: Tongariro, Taupo, Tarawera, and Rangitoto. Then up through Pacific Islands (Samoan lava fields, Metrosideros mist forest, erupting Mt Yasur) towards Indonesian mountains (or Gunung) with names such as Agung, Abang, Kawa Ijen, Bromo, Merapi, and Sibayak … with plants ranging from rice to wild raspberries, Dianella to Dodonaea. In northern Japan we shall climb Mt Asahidako and Rishirifuju, see familiar genera such as Rhododendron and Betula, another gentian, and wildflowers you may have never heard of. Google Earth will take us to Kamchatka, Canada, and Guatemala; we have garden plants from all those places. Finally, to the dry Andes, to see red mistletoes upon columnar cacti, and to Volcan Llaima where the alpine herbs bloom blue and white, yellow and orange and red … an illustrated nursery catalogue to die for … but take nothing but photographs!
Blackstone Hill Conservation Area
Saturday 16th of February 2019, 08:00 AM (2 months from now)
Contact: David Lyttle | djl1yttle@gmail.com | (03) 454 5470
This is a block of montane tussock grassland and shrubland rising to an elevation of 800 m accessed from Highway 85 between Wedderburn and Becks. The Blackstone Hills separate the Ida Valley from the Manuherikia Valley. They are relative flat on top but are dissected by gullies that contain grey scrub vegetation. BSO has not visited the area before so it will be a useful exercise to make a species list for the area. Meet at the Botany carpark at 8.00 am. Contact David Lyttle (03) 454 5470 email djl1yttle@gmail.com
