ARTICLE : 2008 OBITUARIES

 Judith Ann Petterson née Hay, 1928 – 2007

Judith died on 16 December 2007 at Waikanae.   She joined BotSoc in 1953, becoming a life member in 1971.   Judith, and her husband, Graham, were active in the church, but this did not prevent Judith going on field trips, writing on botanical and other subjects, as well as caring for her children and, later, her grandchildren.

Judith spent her childhood in Canterbury.   Her first home was at Little River, Banks Peninsula.   Later she settled at Mt Lawry, Whiterock, in the Canterbury foothills.

Judith studied botany, zoology and chemistry at Victoria University, and gaining an M.Sc (Hons).   Her 1953 thesis was “The genus Wahlenbergia in New Zealand”.   She then worked in Botany Division, DSIR becoming the personal assistant to Dr H.H. Allan.   Judith is acknowledged for technical assistance in Allan’s Flora of NZ (Vol. I).

Judith and Graham married in 1952 and lived on the family farm at Takaka for 10 years.   They spent 1961-1981 in Palmerston North, then four years in the Philippines, were they were house parents at an orphanage on Mindoro Island.

They were active members of BotSoc during the later 1960s and 70s, and continued their botanical interest on return from the Philippines in the mid-80s.

We remember the Petterson family on their earlier trips into the Tararuas from Otaki Gorge, in the Manawatu, the Cobb Valley, Anatoki and Lake Tennyson.   Initially it was with the younger children in backpacks.   By the 1991/92 summer trip to Otago, the children were grown, so Graham and Judith came on BotSoc camps on their own.   Judith continued her studies of native harebells (Wahlenbergia) and brought several of her potted plants with her to illustrate a talk about her work on them.

Judith found time to study and write up her work on Wahlenbergia in NZ., publishing taxonomic and genetic papers in the NZ Journal of Botany in 1995 and 1997.   For her summary paper on the genus Wahlenbergia, she was the first author to use colour plates in the BotSoc Bulletin.   In 2002, Judith also published a paper in the Bulletin comparing some related plants of Norfolk Island and NZ.

Graham and Judith finally settled in Waikanae, where Judith taught bible school at the Baptist Church until a few weeks before her death.   Our sympathy goes out to Graham and the family.

This obituary is based on notes provided by Judith for her funeral service, with contributions from Carol West, and information from Tony Druce’s trip book, and Wellington Botanical Society records.

Rodney Lewington

 Ruth Naomi Dench (née Jessop), 14 November 1926 – 21 December 2007

Starting in the 1950s, Ruth, with her husband Arnold, converted a steep, wind-swept, paddock in Newlands, into a native plant garden of national importance.   They specialised in our alpine flora, e.g. celmisia, myosotis, wahlenbergia, ourisia, ranunculus, ground covers, grasses and grass-like plants, learning, by trial end error, how to germinate the seeds, grow on the seedlings, and raise them to adulthood.   Ruth and Arnold were thus able to provide threatened alpine plants to Percy Scenic Reserve, and Otari-Wilton’s Bush, and at other times, accept seed and specimens from these reserves, and botanists from around NZ, for growing on.   This two-way traffic has been of immense benefit to the conservation of numerous threatened species.   The traffic has not been only in plant material, but also in knowledge, because Ruth, like Arnold, was always ready to pass on what she had learnt about the cultivation and horticultural use of our native plants, and as keen to learn from others.

Weeding their garden was a forte of Ruth’s, and she did it most days of the week, including in harsh weather.   She was as tough as she was determined to care for her plants.   At other times, Ruth would guide visitors to the garden, and during BotSoc workbees on the property, would provide advice on the care of the plants.   Members who attend our evening meeting will remember that at most meetings, Ruth and Arnold would come with one or more trays of potted plants.   Some were threatened species, to be described, but not sold, while others were for sale.   It was typical of Ruth, and Arnold, that the proceeds of the sales went to BotSoc’s Jubilee Award Fund.

Ruth made a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the cultivation of our threatened native plants, especially alpine plants.   Ruth has gone, leaving us with the memory of a stalwart among native plant lovers.   Thank you, Ruth.   Our sympathy goes out to Arnold and the family.

Chris Horne

 (Alick) Lindsay Poole, CBE, D.Sc., 4 March 1908 – 2 January 2008

There will be BotSoccers who could write insightful and comprehensive obituaries for Lindsay Poole, based on decades of friendship or professional associations.   This tribute is written from secondary sources as I didn’t know Lindsay personally.   What stood out, as I found the right Lindsay Poole on Google, was that he was still drawing on his professional knowledge, experience and wisdom, when he was well into his 90s, and that what he had to say is still highly relevant today.

BotSoccer, Dr Maggy Wassilieff, has prepared two obituaries on Lindsay Poole.   I encourage members to read the comprehensive one in Otari-Wilton’s Bush Trust’s newsletter (3/08), or the short one on the Te Ara blog, (http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2008/01/).   Some of the milestones she mentions about his career include:
•   starting as a trainee with the NZ State Forestry Nursery, Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, in 1927
•   being appointed Assistant Director, Botany Division, DSIR, in 1947, and Director in 1949
•   returning to the NZ Forest Service in 1951 as Assistant Director-General, rising to Director-General in 1961, and retiring for the first time in 1971
•   chairing the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council for nine years.

Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand, first published in 1963.

Lindsay was a founding member of BotSoc, and was appointed President in July 1947.   Bulletin no. 17 mentions his role as Assistant Director, Botany Division, and also notes: Published results of his original research work cover a wide range, e.g. many aspects of forest botany, ragwort control, Phormium ecology, grass seed trials.   The same Bulletin contains extracts from his presidential address on 15 September 1947, in which he described aspects of a two-month visit to the USA at the end of 1946.

Many botanists will be most familiar with Lindsay through the book he prepared with botanical artist, Nancy Adams, Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand.   The copy on my shelf is dated 1980, but the book was first printed in 1963.   It does a wonderful job of assisting people without formal botanical training to identify and name trees and shrubs correctly, primarily from leaf characteristics.

Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand also introduces two forest management themes which would remain part of Lindsay’s life for many more decades, the management of indigenous forests, and the effects of introduced wild animals.   It includes, for example: “When opossums, which are primarily tree-canopy feeders, are present together with a browsing animal like the red deer, and a close-browsing animal like the goat, there is danger of complete destruction of the forest if the country is steep.¹

While serving as the Director of Botany Division, he completed a M.Sc at Victoria University of Wellington with an investigation of the taxonomy of NZ’s Nothofagus.

His study of the southern beeches (Nothofagus spp.) was published in 1987.²   This book provides a detailed description and comparison of southern-hemisphere beech.   With the benefit of DNA studies, we would now question the continental drift theory to explain its distribution.   Lindsay would be the first to agree that science advances.

He was particularly critical of the dismantling of the NZ Forest Service in the mid-1980s.   Years later, in 2001, he co-authored a hard-hitting paper with A. Graham D. Whyte,³ which reviewed the upheavals in land-administering departments, and concluded that the actual outcomes were worse than the predictions, particularly for indigenous forests.

We two, and some of our professional colleagues, have observed what appears to us major degradation in indigenous forest condition since 1987 in various parts of the country.   The criteria and indicators required under the Montreal Process protocol, to which NZ is a signatory, have not and could not be reported over all indigenous forest without a major change of political and departmental attitude and support.

Whyte and Poole’s paper concludes with several recommendations.   Some of these may be contested if they were to be presented at a BotSoc meeting, but I doubt if anyone would disagree that: Monitoring, auditing and transparent reporting of outcomes at local, organisational and national levels are essential for assessing whether or not ecosystems are being managed sustainably.

When those systems are followed, Lindsay’s full legacy to the management of forests in NZ will have been realised.

Bev Abbott, President

1 Poole, A.L.   Adams, N.   1980: Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand.   P.D. Hasselberg, Government Printer, p.19.
2 Poole A.L.   1987: Southern Beeches.   DSIR Science Information Publishing Centre, Wellington.
3 Graham, A.; Whyte, D.; Poole, A.L.   2001: New Zealand Forestry Politically Compromised.   Presented at the Annual Conference of the 2001 Commonwealth Forestry Association in Fremantle, Australia.