Systematics

Flora of New Zealand Volume 1, cover by Nancy Adams What do Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes, and the Flora of New Zealand have in common? Benedict Cumberbatch, who played “Khan” in Star…

A box of my ascomycete specimens (photo Peter Johnston) The life of a field systematist revolves around trips into the field to collect a wide variety of organisms, in my case ascomycete…

4 mm high piece of “gold” (photo Peter Johnston) It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.…

Co-author: Peter Buchanan This is the second instalment (first find here) in an exploration of the treasure chest that is New Zealand Fungarium Te Kohinga Hekaheka o Aotearoa (PDD), the national reference…

The King’s pouch fungus (photo Geoff Ridley) Back in 2012 I read about the half-life of facts. That is the period of time it takes for half the facts in a field…

Hydora lanigera (photo Manaaki Whenua) We have few beetles in New Zealand that could be called truly aquatic but, what we do have includes the riffle beetles in the genus Hydora. With…

Old man’s beard looking a bit sad (photo Jerry Cooper) Every year for the last 20 years I have gone to the annual FUNNZ fungal foray with colleagues and enthusiasts from around…

New Zealand is a hotspot for Carex (a type of sedge) with 116 species. This is not far short of our biggest plant group, the hebes (Veronica), with 125 species.  The ancestor…

Root plate in the Ōparara River basin dating to the 2013 cyclone that has Mittenia plumula plants (photo David Glenny) Goblins’ gold On looking into the interior of the cave, the background…

How specimens were held in the past (photo Manaaki Whenua) For the past seven years, and more recently since October 2019, in a lesser-known part of the Allan Herbarium at Manaaki Whenua,…