2008 Programme
Monday 18 February: Evening meeting – Trees in the urban environment
Speaker: Bruce Moorman, Arboriculture Manager / Acting Operations Manager, WCC, will discuss the challenges faced by council arborists to establish and maintain trees in and around cities, and what they are doing regarding tree preservation and heritage tree protection. Bruce will also discuss resource consents and balancing ratepayer rights and tree protection.
Monday 17 March: Evening meeting – Members’ evening
Please share your botanical slides (maximum 20 / person), and photographs taken on BotSoc trips, your paintings,
drawings and your favourite botanical readings. Plant specimens would add to a memorable evening.
Monday 21 April: Evening meeting – Plants of south-western Australia
Speaker: Leon Perrie, Curator of Botany, Te Papa, will present his botanic observations as spotted on the Bibbulmun Track between Perth and Albany, Western Australia, during the spring-flower season from mid-September.
Monday 19 May: Evening meeting – Teaching restoration at VUW: Is the emphasis right?
Speaker: Murray Williams, Senior Lecturer in Ecological Restoration & Conservation, VUW, is the course co-ordinator of the postgraduate course in ecological restoration at Victoria, which is now into its third year. Following Colin Meurk’s recent address to BotSoc, it is a good time to reflect upon its content. Murray will outline the two papers taught, and highlight the tension between presenting restoration as both a theoretical and practical field of study. He seeks guidance from BotSoccers on how to enhance the course so as to meet the multiple objectives of building awareness of restoration in conservation students, of training them in the practical realities of restoration, and producing graduates who can contribute to the restoration planning “industry”.
Monday 16 June: Evening meeting – Monitoring regional council lands
Speaker: Owen Spearpoint, Environmental Technician, Greater Wellington Regional Council, will describe the monitoring of the 50,000 ha of managed lands comprising regional parks, forests, and water catchments. He will describe vegetation changes in plots established in the 1970s-era National Vegetation Survey, including photo points, and show photos of species found. Owen will describe fruit-fall monitoring of hinau and tawa, trends in bird numbers since the 1990s, and studies of pirita / red mistletoe, Peraxilla tetrapetala.
Monday 21 July: Evening meeting – Otari-Wilton’s Bush - BioBlitz and the previous century
Speaker: Rodney Lewington will summarise the floristic results of the March 2007 BioBlitz, and in doing so look at the previous 100 years of botany in the natural area of Otari.
Monday 18 August: Evening meeting – 1. Annual General Meeting
2. AP Druce Memorial Lecture: Looking inside from the outside – working toward a Flora for the Chatham Islands
Speaker: Dr Peter de Lange F.L.S., Threatened Plants Scientist, DOC. The Chatham Islands (CI), internationally recognised as a biodiversity “hot spot”, are rich in endemic species of plants and animals. Botanically there are two endemic genera, the iconic CI forget-me-not (Myosotidium) and CI sowthistle (Embergeria), and a further 34 endemic species, subspecies and varieties of plants. Recent fieldwork suggests that endemic vascular plant species may exceed 50, including at least one new tree species. Since 1996, Peter de Lange has been involved in the conservation management of the islands’ threatened flora, and has developed a keen interest in the islands, their vegetation, biogeography, botanical history, and people. This talk will focus on aspects of the islands’ flora, its evolutionary history, its conservation, and provide an update on what we know about the islands’ remarkable vegetation.
Monday 15 September: Evening meeting – Adaptations to moa: ontogenetic colour patterns in an unusual New Zealand plant
Speaker: Kevin Burns, Senior Lecturer, VUW. The leaves of many New Zealand plants are strangely coloured. One explanation is that they defend against browsers. Moa were once the dominant herbivores in NZ and many unusual characteristics of the flora have been associated with them, notably that of Pseudopanx ferox / fierce lancewood.
Monday 20 October: Evening meeting – A very merry Mere
Speaker: Dr Peter Johnson, a Dunedin botanist, formerly with Botany Division, DSIR, and Landcare Research, and the 2007 recipient of the Allan Mere Award, will use pounamu, and a “mere” of his own making, to explore a multitude of threads-trees and timbers, flowers, fossils, and photographs, to illustrate parts of his botanical life. His interests include floristic botany, plant ecology, wetlands, wildflowers, weeds, lichens, conservation and gardening. He is the author of books on wildflowers and wetlands.
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How to get there by PUBLIC TRANSPORT
You may find the following bus services useful. They stop on Kelburn Parade, about 50m from Lecture Theatre M101 in the Murphy Building, Victoria University:
TO MEETINGS
Route No. 23 Mairangi - 6.30 pm from Houghton Bay, 6.40 Zoo, 6.50 Courtenay Place, 6.57 Pastoral House, 7.02 University.
Route No. 23 Mairangi - 6.55 pm from Southgate, 7.05 Hospital, 7.15 Courtenay Place, 7.22 Pastoral House, 7.27 University.
Route No. 17 Karori Park - 7.07 pm from Bunny Street, 7.15 University.
Route No. 22 Southgate - 6.55 pm from Mairangi, 7.10 University.
Route No. 23 Houghton Bay - 7.25 pm from Mairangi, 7.40 University.
Route No. 17 Railway Station - 6.35 pm from Karori Park, 6.52 University.
Cable Car at 00, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 min past each hour from Lambton Quay terminus. Alight at Salamanca Station.
FROM MEETINGS
Route No. 23 Southgate - 9.10 from University.
Route No. 23 Southgate - 10.10 from University.
Cable Car at approx. 01, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51 minutes past each hour from Salamanca Station. Last service 10.01 pm.
For further information ring Ridewell Enquiry Service 801-7000. |
