Systematics

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 …

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 …

Scanning electron microscope photographs of Meloidogyne minor. Female

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 …

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. …

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 …

Manaaki Whenua is the custodian of almost a third of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Nationally Significant Databases and Collections. These include biological resources such as reference species collections, and are important scientific, cultural …

It’s time to relax the strict guidelines around ecosourcing seed for local genetic stock if we want to build resilience into our changing environment. This call comes from MW researchers Peter Heenan, William …

We have recently scanned and added to our database many historic images of bacterial plant pathogen diseases. The ICMP culture collection is very useful as a store of living cryo-preserved fungal and …

A specimen of Xanthorhoe bulbulata (Geometridae) from the NZAC. This moth is feared possibly extinct. (photo Birgit Rhode) The discovery of the tiny black-and-white micro-moth Eudarcia richardsoni in the Swiss Alps in …