2023 Meetings

BotSoc meetings are usually held at 7.30 pm on the third Monday of each month at Victoria University, Wellington, Lecturer Theatre M101, ground floor Murphy Building, west side of Kelburn Parade.   Enter building off Kelburn Parade about 20m below pedestrian overbridge.   Please note that the doors of the Murphy Building and lecture theatre M101 open for evening meetings at 7 p.m. to allow time for members to socialise before the meeting begins.

Non-members are welcome to come to our evening meetings.

Click here to find out how to get there by public transport

To Help raise funds for BotSoc’s Jubilee Award Fund members are encouraged to bring named seedlings/cuttings for sale at each evening meeting.

How to join a ZOOM meeting option
1. The secretary will e-mail out the invitation to members with a link to join the meeting closer to the event.   Click on the link e-mailed to you in your internet browser.   Please contact the WBS secretary at Secretary WBS<wellingtonbotsocsecretary@gmail.com> if you wish to have the zoom link.
2. Follow the prompt to Download the ZOOM app. which should take you automatically to the meeting.
Please note:
•   When you join the meeting, your microphone will be automatically muted.   This is so no one accidentally interrupts the speaker.   If you’re not speaking, please keep your microphone muted, so accidental background noise and playback doesn’t disrupt the meeting.
•   You can turn the video on if you like or leave it off.

On the meeting night – Please ensure you have connected to the meeting well before 7.30pm, when the meeting proper begins.

2023 Programme

Monday 20 February 2023:   Evening meeting (also via ZOOM - see above for instructions) – More than sentimental: Women and botanical publications in 19th-century Aotearoa and the Pacific

Speaker:   Rebecca Rice, Curator of NZ Historical Art, Te Papa.   The contribution of women ‘flower painters’ to the histories of botany and art have often been considered peripheral—their work readily dismissed as being of a ‘sentimental rather than a scientific nature’.   But what if the social constructs that have often been understood as limiting—the sentimental, the domestic, the amateur — actually lent themselves to an alternative way of relating to the natural world?   In this talk, Rebecca will suggest there may be different ways of thinking about these women and their work, particularly as, in the contemporary moment, we are re-assessing our relationship to nature with a degree of urgency.   Focussing on women such as Fanny Anne Charsley, Ellis Rowan, Sarah Featon and Isabel Sinclair, she considers how their watercolours, prints and associated texts register the intimacy of their encounters with flora, landscapes and people, a position from which they advocated for more meaningful engagement with the natural world.


Monday 20 March 2023:   Evening meeting (also via ZOOM - see above for instructions) – Why monitoring is hard and why we must do better: the case of the NZ Biodiversity Assessment Framework

Speaker:   Matt McGlone, Research Associate, Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, Lincoln.   In 2004, the New Zealand Department of Conservation set up a joint DOC - Manaaki Whenua - Landcare group to explore the options for a national level monitoring scheme. Proposals from this group led to establishment of a comprehensive Biodiversity Assessment Framework underpinned by a Biodiversity Monitoring and Reporting System.   This was not an easy task, and it was ten years before the system was fully operational.   In this talk Matt will discuss the overall rationale and structure of the Biodiversity Assessment Framework, and its progress to date.   He will also reflect on the struggles to get the monitoring system operational and the challenges it faces.   Monitoring systems are liable to fall over through neglect, deliberate defunding and obsolescence.   Much needs to be done to keep the framework alive, relevant and expanding.


Tuesday 17 April 2023:   Evening meeting (also via ZOOM - see above for instructions) – Kauri dieback disease

(this talk replaces the one earlier advertised about Redwood Bush)
Speaker:   Monica Gerth, Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences.   Kauri dieback is caused by a microscopic pathogen: Phytophthora agathidicida.   This talk will cover some of the history of Phytophthora diseases of plants, before moving into current research on the pathogen (and how to control it), and concluding with some of the steps we can take to limit the spread and impact of plant diseases.


Monday 15 May 2023:   Evening meeting – Members’ evening

Share a pre-meeting bring-your-own supper: a flask of hot drink, cup and a small plate of ‘nibbles’ to be followed by a few speakers — limit 10 minutes / person.   For a gold-coin koha, or even ‘folding money’, buy one or more of the books we put on display, and help build up the Jubilee Award Fund which supports research on NZ plants.   Room opens at 7 p.m.

Bring:
•   your botanical slides and photographs taken on BotSoc trips.   Slides on a USB stick – limit 20 / person;
•   favourite botanical readings, your paintings;
•   any spare botanical or other natural-history books you have and don’t want any more to have them auctioned.   Take them home if they don’t sell;
•   plant specimens to sell or to discuss;
•   botanical art—paintings, drawings, ceramics – to add to a memorable evening.