2024 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.

2024 Programme

Monday 19 February 2024:   Evening meeting (also via ZOOM - see above for instructions) – What it takes to save NZ’s most threatened orchids from extinction

Speaker:   Carlos Lehnebach, Curator of Botany, Te Papa, Wellington; Jennifer Alderton-Moss, Plant Conservation Researcher, Wellington City Council; Karin van der Walt, Conservation and Science Advisor - Ōtari Native Botanic Garden.   We will talk about our research at Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush and Te Papa aimed at saving some of our most threatened orchids from extinction.   We will cover aspects related to their pollination, seed collection and germination, and the methods we use to isolate and identify their fungal partners, which are indispensable for seed germination.   We will focus mostly on threatened species found locally, but there will be some examples from orchids further afield (e.g. the Auckland region, Waikato & North-West Nelson).   Our talk will highlight challenges, successes and the lessons we have learnt while trying to save some of our less studied plant species.


Monday 18 March 2024:   Evening meeting – Disentangling the effects of deer and possums from those of natural disturbance in NZ’s forests

Speaker:   Peter Bellingham, Senior Researcher, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, Lincoln. NZ’s natural forests have been shaped in their composition and structure by natural disturbances.   Some of these disturbances, such as past glaciation or the Taupō eruption, have been at vast scales, and others at much smaller scales.   The resilience of natural forests to such disturbances over millennia is often reflected in different ecological strategies among tree species as forests develop after disturbance.   Differences among tree species in growth rates, leaf chemistry and wood density reflect differences in response to changes in soil nutrient availability and light soon and long after disturbances.   The recent settlement of NZ by people has brought new disturbances (such as fire) and many introduced, non-native plants and animals.   Climate change is causing changes in the intensity and scale of some disturbances, such as cyclones and drought.   Introduced mammals e.g., deer and brushtail possums, consume some forest trees and shrubs preferentially, yet their control sometimes does not result in the changes expected.   In this talk, I will discuss the problem of disentangling the damaging effects of browsing by deer and possums from continuing natural change after disturbances and, in that context, where we can apply control of deer and possums to achieve maximum efficacy.


Tuesday 15 April 2024:   Evening meeting – Ecosourcing for resilience in a changing environment

Speaker:   Peter Heenan, Senior Researcher – Botanist, Systematics, Landcare Research.   Ecosourcing seed of ‘local genetic stock’ has become unnecessarily restrictive. Very little is gained through restrictive ecosourcing of tree seed. We recommend that phylogeographic patterns and biogeographic boundaries be used to set nine broad ecosourcing regions and, within these regions, phenotypic adaptation to particular environments be used as a guide to seed selection.   This more relaxed approach to ecosourcing will improve restoration outcomes through increasing species and genetic diversity, reducing the detrimental effects of inbreeding and promoting the genetic rescue of populations of threatened species.   Examples of adopting an eco-evolutionary approach to ecosourcing are provided for the early-successional coloniser Kunzea ericoides and late-successional conifer species.   The paper describing this research is ‘open access’ and the pdf is easily downloaded using the following link: here We recommend that you see this video before the talk - Ecosourcing for resilience in a changing climate.


Monday 20 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 17 June 2024:   Evening meeting – Norfolk Island

Speakers:   Lara Shepherd, Science Researcher, Te Papa, and Leon Perrie, Botany Curator, Te Papa.   Norfolk Island is a remote, subtropical island between New Zealand and New Caledonia.   Many of Norfolk Island’s native plants have affinities with New Zealand but there are also a number of endemic species.   Much of the original vegetation of the island has been heavily modified since European settlement and invasive weeds are common.   Many of the native plant species are now threatened.   We will give an introduction to Norfolk Island and its plants.   We will also provide an overview of our fern research on the island and why Norfolk Island ferns are critical to understanding New Zealand fern names.


Monday 15 July 2024:   Evening meeting – Understanding what we see when we look at native bush

Speaker:   Dr. Hera Cook, Senior Lecturer, University of Otago.   Many New Zealanders love the bush but, beyond finding it beautiful, we know little about the impact of human settlement on our forests and the swift changes taking place.   This talk examines how I came to understand what I was seeing and learnt about forest dynamics, the impact of pest animals and the current situation.   It suggests how we might encourage greater awareness among a wider audience and analyse the major obstacles standing in the way of doing so.


Monday 19 August 2024:   Evening meeting – 1. Annual General Meeting, 2. Sex, Flowers and Species – Tony Druce Memorial Lecture

Speaker:   Phil Garnock-Jones, Emeritus Professor, Victoria University of Wellington.   The age-old question of how to define species seems no closer to becoming settled science.   But regardless of how we recognise species, we can be sure that sex and mating are at the heart of what a species is.   For flowering plants, that focuses our attention on flowers, as we have done since Linnaeus first made known the nature of plant sexuality and applied it to taxonomy.   Flowers are complex structures comprising multiple organs that (mostly) work together to bring about mating.   And although unisexual plant gametophytes (female embryo sacs and male pollen grains) produce the eggs and sperms, sporophyte plants and the flowers they bear can express their sexuality along an axis from strictly female, through more common hermaphrodites, to strictly male.   Unfortunately for taxonomists, flowers are short-lived and—worse—they lose their shape and colour when pressed.   I’ll use close-up photography to demonstrate the remarkable diversity of form and function in some New Zealand flowers and relate it to Tony Druce’s prime interest: species taxonomy.


Monday 16 September 2024:   Evening meeting – Conservation genetics of Syzygium maire / swamp maire.   How can a naturally widespread species remain adaptable when artificially fragmented?

Speaker:   Colan Balkwill, PhD Researcher, will be discussing his PhD work on conserving the genetic diversity of a critically threatened New Zealand tree species, with thoughts on how to mitigate the effects of habitat fragmentation on adaptability of the species.


Monday 21 October 2024:   Evening meeting – Presentations by students recipients of grants

NOTE: Venue – Lecture theatre SUMT 228. Access through glass doors from Beaglehole Courtyard and down flights of stairs.

1. Speaker:   Rachael Lockhart.   Phenotypic plasticity of invasive hawkweeds under drought conditions in New Zealand grasslands.   I aimed to assess the plasticity in functional traits of Pilosella officinarum and Hieracium lepidulum populations in relation to colonisation history (invaded pre-1980, 1990s, or post-2000) and moisture conditions (precipitation).   Using permanent long-term grassland sites monitored since the 1980s, I collected and measured functional traits of Pilosella (n = 17) and Hieracium (n = 16) populations established at different times, and over a precipitation gradient.   To measure plasticity within populations in response to water availability, I also set up a common garden experiment using seeds collected from these field populations and grew them under two watering treatments: high-frequency and low-frequency.   This research helps us to understand the mechanisms underpinning hawkweed trait variation and how this may affect their future spread.
2. Speaker:   Riccardo Ciarle.   Re-evaluating the loss of divarication hypothesis on New Zealand’s outlying islands.   The loss of divarication hypothesis predicts that plant species should lose divaricate-related traits after colonising New Zealand’s outlying islands.   Previous studies tested this hypothesis by assuming that ancestors of island endemics were always divaricate and that mainland sister species remained relatively unchanged over time.   In this study, we used ancestral state reconstruction to test this assumption. Results show that loss of divarication, while supported, is not as widespread as previously thought.
3. Speaker:   Joe Dillon.   Climate change and New Zealand orchids.   Climate change is set to drastically change the way we do conservation in Aotearoa.   In my Masters I’m looking at native orchids and how they are affected by rising temperatures.   I’ll talk about what changes are in-store—the good, and the bad, and will show some preliminary results to that effect.


Monday 18 November: 2024:   Evening meeting – Working with plants

Speaker:   Chris Ecroyd: Chris will give a few botanical highlights of his 37 years as herbarium curator at Scion in Rotorua.   These include his research on our only fully parasitic native plant, Dactylanthus taylorii and short-tailed bats.   Now retired to Nelson, he will also provide information on some of the more interesting plants to be found around Lake Rotoiti which the Society will visit in January, such as the aquatic fern, Pilularia novae-hollandiae and not too far away in the Red Hills Nothothlaspi viretum, the Red Hills penwiper and other ultramafic endemic plants.