Geoff Baylis lecture: Why we’re obsessed with Craspedia

Speakers: Ilse Breitwieser and Rob Smissen. Location: Archway lecture theatre, University of Otago.

Call them billy-buttons, drumstick flower, billy balls, sun balls in Australia or woollyheads and puatea in New Zealand or with their scientific name Craspedia (Gnaphalieae, Compositae / Asteraceae), these everlasting daisies are conspicuous members of many plant communities in New Zealand and Australia but remain an outstanding taxonomic challenge. In 1961, based on a small number of available herbarium specimens, HH Allan’s Flora of New Zealand volume 1 recorded just 6 species in New Zealand. However, the 1992 and 1993 checklists of Tony Druce, who made extensive field observations and collected numerous herbarium specimens, distinguished more than 45 undescribed entities that might or might not warrant taxonomic recognition. Morphological variation in New Zealand Craspedia is complex, making the definition and circumscription of species problematic. At least in part, this difficulty is the legacy of an extremely rapid and recent diversification of the genus in New Zealand – a scenario that produces challenges for genetic as well as morphological approaches to delimiting species. In this presentation we will review some of our research results about the taxonomy and evolution of Craspedia in New Zealand. Much work remains, but we anticipate our extensive morphological study of plants in the field, in cultivation and in the herbarium as well as our new genetic markers will help us provide an improved classification of Craspedia in New Zealand and give us better insight into how their diversity has evolved.