Past Events

Field trip to McPhee's Rock, Rock and Pillar Range

A great chance to experience some wonderful alpine vegetation on the outskirts of Dunedin City. Meet at the Botany Department car park at 9 a.m.

Summer Camp at Boyd Creek, Southland

To be held in conjunction with Wellington Botanical Society from 29 December 2010 – 7 Januray 2011. We will be based at the Southland Boys High School hut at Boyd Creek in the Eglington Valley. Botanising possibilities include Lake Marian, Gertrude and Hollyford Valleys, Milford Sound, Key Summit, Eglinton Valley, Hutt Creek, Knobs Flat and Boyd Creek tops. Check the Wellington Bot Soc website for more details: www.wellingtonbotsoc.org.nz or contact Mick Parsons: email, phone (04) 972 1142.

End of year dinner at the Asian Restaurant

Always a fun and popular event! This year we return to the fabulous Asian Restaurant, 43 Moray Place, Dunedin. Make sure you let Bill Wilson know if you'd like to come.

Botanic Garden, Picnic Lunch with French Botanical Society

Another chance to meet the French Botanical Society. Bring a picnic lunch to the azalea garden, just through from the toilets in the upper Botanic Garden.

Old Man Range with French Botanical Society

Members are invited to join the French Botanical Society on their trip up the Old Man Range, guided by Mark Hanger. They aim to be at bottom of the Symes Rd by 11:30 am and are coming from Lake Ohau that morning. David Lyttle will be taking a 4WD vehicle from Dunedin. If you'd like to car-pool contact him at: 454 5470 or djlyttle@ihug.co.nz

Life in your backyard: bringing the social into the natural sciences

A talk by Prof. Katharine Dickinson, Department of Botany, University of Otago. 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.

Field trip to Mt Cargill

There is a swampy clearing in a pine plantation below and to the north of the summit of Mt Cargill. This area has not been investigated botanically and appears to contain a number of uncommon plants in the Dunedin area. Plants found there include Coprosma decurva, Aciphylla scott-thomsonii, Thelymitra cyanea and Forstera tenella. Meet at Botany Department car park at 9.00 a.m.

Winning Botany Colloquium talks

This evening of talks will be presented by the winners of the prizes at the Botany Postgraduate Research Colloquium. The student speakers will talk about their research, which will almost certainly be on a diverse and interesting range of topics. 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.

Physiological responses of macroalgae under high PAR, UVR and elevated temperature

A talk by Dr Michael Roleda, Marsden Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Botany, University of Otago. A Department of Botany Seminar. Note special time and venue: At the Union Street Lecture Theatre (upstairs, corner of Union and Great King Streets).

Cancelled: Weekend field trip to Thisbe Stream, Catlins

Note: This trip has been cancelled due to inclement weather. Hopefully it will be able to run early in 2011. We will stay at Thisbe Stream where there is a six bed hut and good sites for camping. We will see beech forest with Peraxilla mistletoe, and frost hollow vegetation with the shrubs Melicytus flexuosus and Coprosma elatirioides. If we are fortunate we may see mohua; not botanical but really cool little birds. Contact Leader Graeme Loh by Wednesday 22 Sept.

Pathways of connectivity in marine landscapes

A talk by Assoc. Prof. Glenn Hyndes, Centre for Marine Ecosystems Research, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. A Department of Botany Seminar. Note special time and venue: At the Union Street Lecture Theatre (upstairs, corner of Union and Great King Streets).

9th Annual Geoff Baylis Lecture. Plant taxonomy: how can we tell if we're wrong?

The 9th Annual Geoff Baylis Lecture will be presented by by Prof. Philip Garnock-Jones, School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington. Plant taxonomy is practiced in many different ways by different taxonomists, but are there any unifying or general principles that can be applied? In this lecture, I'll look at the two main types of problems that taxonomists try to solvethe delimitation of species and the classification of those species into higher-ranked taxausing examples from groups I'm familiar with. For example, in Veronica, we have new taxonomic revisions of all the New Zealand groups, but we still don't understand the relationships of many of the species, especially among the shrubby hebes. Forty years ago, we had an outline by Lucy Moore of how the different groupings might be related to each other, a new Flora treatment that included a long list of species of uncertain status (e.g., Hebe biggarii), a suspicion that hebes hybridise more than is quite decent, and an almost complete list of chromosome numbers that suggested new understandings at species and higher ranks. Field work throughout New Zealand, new data from chemistry and genetics, and the framing of questions as explicit hypotheses have helped a group of us answer some of the questions, but many puzzles remain to keep the next generation of taxonomists busy. Lecture at 6 pm in Burns 1, with nibbles and drinks from 5:15 pm in the concourse outside the Castle lecture theatres

Botany 4th year research presentations

Presentations of students completing BTNY480/490 Research Projects in the Department of Botany.

12:00 noon. James Wang: Tree Species effects on canopy transpiration in two Catlins forests

12:20 pm. Vickey McGimpsey: Mauve the mysterious flower colour pigment in Euphrasia dyeri

12:40 pm. Suli Teasdale: Difference in Cortinarius communities for three forest types: Pinus radiata, Nothofagus spp., and Kunzea ericoides

1:00 pm. Ella Hayman: Does foliage of Thymus vulgaris (Labiatae) inhibit the germination of native shrum and grass species?

1:20 pm. Sharon McKenzie: Investigating the identity of Hypochoeris Mosaic Virus

Note special time and venue: At the Union Street Lecture Theatre (upstairs, corner of Union and Great King Streets).

Energetic requirements for growth of the deep-water red seaweed Anotrichium crinitum

A talk by Dan Pritchard, Department of Botany, University of Otago. A Department of Botany Seminar. Note special time and venue: At the Union Street Lecture Theatre (upstairs, corner of Union and Great King Streets).

Rare and Threatened Lichens

Illustrated talk by Allison Knight. Last year's lichen talk concentrated on the common and widespread lichens that Allison is illustrating in her introductory Field Guide. This year she will talk about some of the rare, threatened, uncommon and little known lichens that the Threatened Lichen Group are in the process of publishing. 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.