Tag Archives: collection development

Bio-blitzing Mana

21 February 2011 – 12.11pm

The Mana Bioblitz  is currently on.

A Bioblitz is a count of all the species in an area. I recently visited Mana Island with Antony, one of Te Papa’s Botany Collection Managers, to contribute to the botanical cause.

Inflorescence of Helminthotheca echiodes (oxtongue). Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

Azolla filiculoides, a floating aquatic fern. Red ponds are due to these ferns. Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

Modiola caroliniana (creeping mallow); in the mallow family. Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

Close up of the inflorescence of the daisy Achillea millefolium (yarrow). Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

Medicago arabica (spotted bur medick), a member of the pea family related to clover. Note the distinctive black markings on the leaflets. Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

The distinctive forked hairs on the leaves of Leontodon taraxacoides (hawkbit) distinguish it from similar dandelion-type plants. Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

Centaurium erythraea (centaury); a weed from the gentian family. Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

Antony being attacked by a head band of Calystegia silvatica (great bindweed). Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

The initial products of five hours on Mana Island: two herbarium presses containing specimens to be identified, plus a plastic bag full of seaweeds collected from beach drift for our phycological colleagues. Leon Perrie, © Te Papa.

By Leon Perrie | Posted in Field trips, Plants | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

Queen’s service medal for font designer Joseph Churchward

8 June 2010 – 3.37pm
Churchward Newstype Boldest Sketch

Churchward Newstype Boldest Sketch; Te Papa; Purchased 2008

The 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours list included Samoan-born font designer Joseph Churchward. Since the 1960s, Churchward has hand-created over 570 typefaces (fonts), the greatest number designed by any individual in the world.

Click on the image to watch the video interview with Churchward on TVNZ:

Joseph Churchward sketching at his desk

As a way of documenting Churchward’s work, in August 2008, Te Papa acquired about 1000 examples of Churchward’s font designs. Now, the Pacific Cultures collection houses 42 samples of Churchward’s typefaces.

View more of Churchward’s amazing typefaces on Te Papa’s Collections Online:
http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Search.aspx?term=joseph+churchward

By Safua Akeli | Posted in Collections Online, History, Pacific | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 4

3 June 2010 – 2.12pm

Our final collecting day. We packed up and began heading from home.

We spent about an hour alongside the road in the gorge of the Owahanga River. Peter was pleased to add several new mosses, including some that have a liking for calcareous substrates. We were disappointed to find the invasive horsetail Equisetum arvense well established; it had not been previously collected from the area.

Horsetail, Equisetum arvense. Photos by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Locality (including GPS), habitat, and abundance details are recorded for each specimen collected and photographed. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Previous posting on horsetails.

Our final stop was at a covenant in the Waihoki Valley, where we added several forest species not seen on Day 3.

Hinau, Elaeocarpus dentatus. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

After lunch we headed for home. Back at Te Papa and in our specimen preparation room, Carlos and I pressed the day’s collection, and put all of the specimens (c. 400) into our dryer (about 30 degrees celsius). There they will stay for the next week or so, tightly pressed so that they dry flat.

After drying, the specimens are frozen for a week as a quarantine measure before being brought into the main collection area. We don’t want to introduce any herbivorous insects!

Over the coming months, we will confirm identifications, formally accession and database the specimens, secure them with tape onto archival card (for the bigger plants) or house them in archival envelopes (for the mosses and liverworts), and finally file them away in the collection. Eventually you’ll be able to see those with associated photos on Collections Online.

Collections Online specimens from Wairarapa 2009 trip.

Growing Te Papa’s plant collection.

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 1.

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 2.

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 3.

By Leon Perrie | Posted in Field trips, Plants | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 3

2 June 2010 – 4.04pm

On day three we collected from another QEII National Trust site inland from Akitio. Diverse habitats kept us busy, with the canopy ranging from black beech (Nothofagus solandri) on ridges through hillside tawa (Beilschmiedia tawa) to creek-lined pukatea (Laurelia novae-zelandiae). 

Trunk of large pukatea (Laurelia novae-zelandiae). Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

The divaricating shrub Raukaua anomalus was common at all of the forested sites we visited. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Jean-Claude took photographs of most of the bigger plants that we collected. These will go on Te Papa’s Collections Online website. Photo by Leon Perrie. © Te Papa.

Collections Online specimens from Wairarapa 2009 trip.

Peter and Pat look for mosses on rocks outside the forest. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Back at base, Leon and Barry press the bigger specimens between newspaper and cardboard. Pat, in the background, checks his notes. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Growing Te Papa’s plant collection.

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 1.

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 2.

By Leon Perrie | Posted in Field trips, Plants | Also tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 2

1 June 2010 – 2.55pm

Day two comprised a visit to a covenanted reserve on the eastern scarp of the Puketoi Range, arranged by QEII National Trust representative for Tararua, Bill Wallace.

QEII National Trust website.

We collected about 60 species of vascular plants and a similar number of bryophytes (mosses & liverworts).  Amongst our haul was the first confirmed New Zealand specimen of the liverwort Chiloscyphus gippslandicus.

Surveying the terrain at the beginning of the day. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Carlos collecting arboreally, in order to obtain a flowering specimen. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Another specimen being added to the collecting bag. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Craspedia flower head, Nertera, and Euphrasia. Photos by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Mountain cabbage tree, Cordyline indivisa. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Looking eastwood towards the end of the day. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

The bryophyte collectors processing their specimens back at base. Additional lighting is needed to see many of the diagnostic features of these small plants. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Growing Te Papa’s plant collection.

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 1.

By Leon Perrie | Posted in Field trips, Plants | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Botany Fieldtrip Wairarapa 2010: Day 1

31 May 2010 – 5.39pm

This year’s Wairarapa plant collecting trip was to the Pongaroa area.

Day 1 started with packing up Te Papa’s 4WD. Then the long drive to our Akitio accommodation.

Roadside collecting. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

We made a few stops along the way, targeting places that looked to have a diverse array of weeds and/or be promising for mosses.

Weed montage. Photos by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

We followed a colleague’s directions down a backcountry road to see Celmisia spectablis. Celmisia daisies most often grow in alpine conditions, so lowland Wairarapa (altitude = 300m) is an unusual site.

Celmisia spectablis. Too late to catch it flowering. Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Growing Te Papa’s plant collection.

By Leon Perrie | Posted in Field trips, Plants | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Growing Te Papa’s Plant Collection

27 May 2010 – 10.31am

Te Papa’s collection of c. 250 000 dried plant specimens grows by about 2000 a year. In part this is from donations, but principally it is from collections made by Te Papa’s Botany staff and associates.

Fern specimen in Te Papa’s botany collection. © Te Papa.

More of Te Papa’s Botany collection on Collections Online.

Some of our fieldtrips target particular species that we are researching, but we also undertake two general collecting trips each year.

1) We participate in the annual four day John Child Bryophyte Workshop, collecting mosses, lichens, and ferns.

2) We have a three or four day field-trip in the Wairarapa, collecting seed plants, ferns, mosses, and liverworts.

2009 John Child Bryophyte Workshop.

The 2009 Wairarapa field-trip was to the Lake Onoke area.

The 2010 Wairarapa trip was to the Pongaroa area. I’ll blog about it soon.

Pongaroa - northern Wairarapa (or southern Hawke’s Bay). Photo by Jean-Claude Stahl. © Te Papa.

Why have so many plant specimens? The aim is to represent the morphological variation and distribution of all plants in New Zealand. Even collectively, New Zealand’s herbaria (dried plant collections) are still a long way from that goal.

The network of New Zealand herbaria.

By Leon Perrie | Posted in Plants | Also tagged , , | Comments (1)
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