2025 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.   Meet zoom URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89547154619?pwd=bE0zRXRWSXBBUkVoUjdPcElJNXlJUT09
Meeting ID: 895 4715 4619
Passcode: 857939
2.   Follow the prompt to open link (or Download the ZOOM app. if needed).   The app. should automatically open and take you 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.

2025 Programme

Monday 17 February 2025:   Evening meeting (also via ZOOM - see above for instructions) – 25 years of Long Gully Bush

Speaker:   Chris Cosslett, Long Gully Bush ranger.   Chris will talk about 25 years of progress in restoring this privately-owned reserve from a goat-ravaged gorse block to early stage native forest.   Long Gully Bush lies between the southern end of Zealandia and South Karori Rd.   It is thought to have been clad, before clearance for farming, in kohekohe-podocarp forest similar to that seen in Porirua Scenic Reserve.   Long Gully Bush is not only a recovering native forest ecosystem but is also home to threatened native birds that have colonised it from Zealandia.   Most of the area is owned by the Wellington Natural Heritage Trust.   The Trust manages the whole, including contributions from several neighbours, under a management plan prepared in 2015.


Monday 17 March 2025:   Evening meeting – Where to for New Zealand’s biodiversity – eradicating predators or managing ecosystems?

Speaker:   John Leathwick, DSc, Conservation Science Consultant.   In two recent science papers John worked with co-authors to raise fundamental questions about how best to achieve New Zealand’s biodiversity goals.   In his first paper he explored the current emphasis on eradicating just four introduced predators (Predator Free 2050), highlighting both the considerable technical challenges that this poses, and the need to also consider the impacts of other major biodiversity pressures including browsers and weeds.   In his second paper he demonstrated how a systematic ecosystem-focused approach to biodiversity management, first proposed by NZ's Geoff Kelly in 1980, could be efficiently implemented using contemporary conservation planning tools.   He argued that such an approach would be much more likely to achieve NZ’s biodiversity goals than current predator-focused management.   His talk will explore various aspects of these two papers.


Tuesday 22 April:   Evening meeting – Resolving the taxonomy of an iconic New Zealand plant genus Aciphylla (taramea/speargrass/spaniard) (NOTE: Easter 18–21 April 2025)

Speaker:   Lara Shepherd, Science Researcher, Te Papa and Leon Perrie, Botany Curator, Te Papa.   Aciphylla is one of the largest indigenous vascular plant genera in Aotearoa New Zealand, with ~ 40 species.   The larger species are an often prominent and iconic feature of our tussocklands and the bane of trampers.   Despite the ecological and cultural significance of Aciphylla, the taxonomy of the genus has not been comprehensively revised since 1956, and there are many outstanding issues.   We will provide an introduction to the genus and the taxonomic problems we are hoping to resolve.


Monday 19 May 2024:   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.


Monday 16 June:   Evening meeting – Trees on tap?   Biology and conservation of the parasitic plant Dactylanthus taylorii

Speaker:   Avi Holzapfel, Operations Manager, DOC’s Hauraki District, Coromandel.   Avi will summarise our current understanding of the biology and ecology of dactylanthus (Pua o te reinga / Dactylanthus taylorii), New Zealand’s only native fully parasitic flowering plant.   Growing underground as a perennial tuber attached to the root of native host trees and shrubs, its nectar-rich inflorescences break through the forest floor, where they are pollinated by a ground-foraging endemic bat.   Browsing of inflorescences by introduced mammals is limiting the species’ recruitment and has led to its disappearance over 96% of its pre-human distribution range.   The talk will cover the biology and ecology of dactylanthus and the efforts taken to protect the species, including recent translocations to Ōtari Native Botanic Garden and Zealandia.   Avi will present recent research on the establishment of populations, and stunning time-lapse images that confirm that dactylanthus should be regarded not as a rare oddity, but an ecosystem driver and a critical element within the forest food web.


Monday 21 July:   Evening meeting – Contemporary Botanical Illustration

Speaker:   Jane Humble, Wellington BotSoc member.   In modern times, with so many excellent means of image reproduction available, the ancient tradition of botanical art not only survives but has become increasingly popular.   Training in botanical art is very specific and the execution of this school of art is very time-consuming.   Contemporary artists use traditional methods and materials at the same time having access to well-standardised modern pigments and equipment.   There is a wide spectrum of styles included in ‘Botanical Art’ and at the more scientific extreme it is known as ‘Botanical Illustration’ and must display all of the plant’s identifying features.   It is the enduring importance of Botanical Illustration that I will be talking about.


Monday 18 August:   Evening meeting – 1. AGM; and
2. Tony Druce Memorial Lecture Craspedia, Tony Druce’s legacy

Speakers:   Ilse Breitwieser, Research Associate – Botanist; Rob Smissen, Senior Researcher – Botanist.   Allan Herbarium, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, Lincoln.   Call them billy-buttons, drumstick flower, billy balls, sun balls in Australia or woollyheads and puatea in New Zealand or with their scientific name Craspedia (Gnaphalieae, Compositae / Asteraceae), these everlasting daisies are conspicuous members of many plant communities in New Zealand and Australia but remain an outstanding taxonomic challenge.   In 1961, based on a small number of available herbarium specimens, HH Allan’s Flora of New Zealand volume 1 recorded just 6 species in New Zealand.   However, the 1992 and 1993 checklists of Tony Druce, who made extensive field observations and collected numerous herbarium specimens, distinguished more than 45 undescribed entities that might or might not warrant taxonomic recognition.   Morphological variation in New Zealand Craspedia is complex, making the definition and circumscription of species problematic.   At least in part, this difficulty is the legacy of an extremely rapid and recent diversification of the genus in New Zealand — a scenario that produces challenges for genetic as well as morphological approaches to delimiting species.   In this presentation we will review Tony Druce’s work on Craspedia in New Zealand and present some of our research results about its taxonomy and evolution.   Much work remains, but we anticipate our extensive morphological study of plants in the field, in cultivation and in the herbarium as well as our new genetic markers will help us provide an improved classification of Craspedia in New Zealand and give us better insight into how their diversity has evolved.