Canterbury Botanical Society
Roger Keey - 30/5/98

Forty seven years ago the Canterbury Native Flora Society was founded, but a few years ago it widened its brief and became the Canterbury Botanical Society.

Not just for professional botanists
The society welcomes as members both professional botanists and amateurs who are interested in plants, especially plants growing in the wild. This is what differentiates the Botanical Society from the Horticultural Society where the members are concerned with cultivated plants. The mix of professionals and those who are interested in plants gives added strength to the group. There are few societies where both lay and professionals can mix together on equal terms.

Perhaps it is because of the nature of botany. Until quite recently botany was concerned with collection and cataloguing of plants - like a sort of stamp collecting equivalent. Botany certainly is now becoming more scientific in the sense of using more quantitative analysis, but, particularly in New Zealand where the flora is still not fully understood, there is plenty of scope for the keen amateur alongside the professional.

Meetings
We have monthly meetings covering topics such as study of particular native plants, the introduction of flora from overseas, plant propagation, ecological aspects, and conservation. Our interest is centred mainly on plants found in the Canterbury region, but we have had talks which reflect members' activities as they have gone on expeditions overseas, such as the flora of the Pacific Islands and South America. It is interesting to see how the various Pacific Islands have quite different flora as one travels from west to east. There are major geographical divisions; on some islands the flora is rich and on others fairly sparse.

Field excursions
These are normally held on the day following a meeting, sometimes reflecting the topic of the meeting.

Study of the effect of fire on New Zealand beech forest
We had a meeting looking at to what extent a beech forest could recover after a severe fire. There was a fire in the Mount Thomas and Richardson area of north Canterbury in an area of mountain beech. We were shown a series of slides looking at the area immediately after the fire, where we saw the burnt out area. The under storey had completely gone, but the tops of the trees still seemed to be alive. A year or two afterwards all we could see were some dead trunks, and ten years after it was virtually a quite open scrub land. Very little if any of the original forest cover had come back. Here fire was totally threatening to the vegetation.

Contrast with the effect of fires in Australia and the Mt Helens eruption in the USA
This is quite unlike what happens in bush areas in Australia where eucalyptus and other species seem to rely on fire to help germinate the hard seeds so that these forests come away after fires. Areas devastated by the eruption at Mt St Helens and covered by volcanic ash have now developed a creeping forest cover, whereas if a similar thing happened in New Zealand over a beech forest that would be the end of the forest. It would never come back. Beech forest grows only very slowly from its edges.

Trips into areas without public access
Because of the connections of members it is possible for us to go into small reserves and covenanted areas which are not often visited by the public.

This gives an opportunity to see how rich or how poor the reserves are. Forested areas have had the priority for conservation, but scrublands and the plains flora have been little prized. For instance, on the Canterbury Plains there is very little of the original flora left and where it occurs it is likely to be lost. There are small plant communities of very old kowhai trees along the Waimakariri River, and there are other remnants on the roadside which are prey to being mown down as a matter of tidiness. There is scope for us to create a few more roadside reserves, or pockets of vegetation in the corners of paddocks.

I was intrigued a few years ago when in Oxfordshire in England to see that certain areas of the roadside were actually set aside as reserves. Even in an intensely cultivated land it is possible for agriculture and botanical conservation to go hand in hand.

Workshops
Occasional workshops are held on particular plant groups or subjects, at the University of Canterbury or at Lincoln University. Dr Colin Burrows, a retired senior lecturer from the Department of Plant and Microbial Science, took various specimens and gave us clues as to how we could identify major plant types. Another workshop was concerned with fungi.

Summer field camps
Camps are held over a weekend just before Christmas and one for a week's duration in the New Year, usually somewhere in the South Island, ranging from Karamea in the north west to the Fiordland and Southland areas. This year we are planning to go to the Marlborough Sounds to the Nydia Bay area which is possibly the least modified area of the Marlborough Sounds. In this way, we are able to gain a wider understanding of New Zealand's botanical heritage, and the keen members work on the flora found each day.

Size of the Canterbury group
We have approximately two hundred members and on average fifty attend meetings, twenty five attend the field excursions and camps. We have a number of members of all age groups. I am always amazed that our older members who have had hip replacements or other apparent physical defects are not dissuaded from going out into the field. Our activities do not require a great standard of fitness, but we do go up into the alpine environment, particularly in the summer months. We do it the easy way, and I must admit that ski fields do have benefits in giving access to higher regions.

Members on a field excursion

This photo taken among the tussock on the slopes of Mt Hutt with the patchwork of the Canterbury Plains in the distance shows in marked contrast the original vegetation on the high ground and the totally modified landscape of the Plains.

Some interesting plants seen on field excursions

The Haast buttercup in flower in the Craigieburn Range

The Haast Buttercup
[Ranunculus hastii ]
This can be seen on the Mount Hutt ski field. It has a flower about 50 mm across and brownish leaves. A group of us sat on the scree looking with great interest at how the buttercups grew in rows and columns down the scree as if they had been planted there by design. It has a long root and I wondered if the winter skiing helps to spread the seed around for the following year.

The Penwiper Plant

Penwiper plant in flower in the Torlesse Range

[Notothlaspi australe ]
This can be found on the screes in the Torlesse Range some 80 km (50 miles) from Christchurch. It gets its name because the structure of the plant is rather like a Victorian penwiper. The Latin name means that it is a southern pennycress. This is a crucifer, that is the petals are shaped like a cross, and is related to household plants like a cabbage.

Heliohebe raoullii
This is an attractive plant found in the dry areas of North Canterbury. It is named after the French botanist, Etienne Raoul, who was the first person to make any systematic study of flora of Banks Peninsula when he was a surgeon on the L'Aube. We have just celebrated the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book called 'The Selection of New Zealand Plants' ("La choix des plantes de la Nouvelle Zélande"). There was a symposium attended by the French ambassador and a set of proceedings will be published with help from the New Zealand-France Friendship Fund.

Heliohebe raoullii in an Avonhead garden

The joys of belonging to the Society
For me the delight about belonging to the Society is that it has given me a greater understanding of New Zealand's flora so that going out into the bush I feel as though I am not threatened by aliens but greeted by friends.

It is curious how certain plant communities remain in the mind. I have walked the Routeburn Track twice, once for its whole length and once for just part. Near one set of small waterfalls the first time I saw a small group of the South Island edelweiss, [Leucogenes grandiceps] in a charming location close to the water. Ten years later I tried to find the same spot and was pleased to find the flowers were still there. It was almost like visiting old friends.

Membership of the Society has introduced me to places that I would never have gone to otherwise.

A large proportion of the New Zealand indigenous flora is endemic so it is basically here and nowhere else. Therefore there is a sense in which it is, to use a Maori word, one of the 'taonga' which we should cherish.

Belonging to the Botanical Society has helped me to get a greater feeling for the land. It makes me feel that it is my land even though I am a new New Zealander who has been here for only thirty six years!

Branches of the Society
There is a New Zealand Botanical Society and there are regional societies in both the North and South Islands.

Information about joining the Botanical Society
Anyone wishing to join any of these groups may email me for information at r.keey@cape.canterbury.ac.nz
or fax me at 64 3 364 2063