New electronic Flora of New Zealand (eFloraNZ) treatments have just been published for six fern families in New Zealand. The new treatments include the hairy tree ferns, Dicksonia, and the fork ferns, Tmesipteris. Each eFloraNZ treatment is a definitive, peer-reviewed account of a group of plants.
eFloraNZ treatment for the Dicksoniaceae (the hairy tree ferns, including whekī and whekī-ponga). (pdf)
eFloraNZ treatment for the Psilotaceae (which includes the fork ferns). (pdf)
The other newly published treatments are for the families Equisetaceae, Loxsomataceae, Marsileaceae, and Salviniaceae.
Free access to all published eFloraNZ treatments, including 11 fern families.
The eFloraNZ project “provides dynamic, continually updated, online taxonomic information about the New Zealand flora”. The current collaborators are Landcare Research, Te Papa, and NIWA.
Homepage of the Flora of New Zealand.
Below is an example of a page from the fork ferns (Psilotaceae) treatment:
The eFloraNZ treatments include:
- detailed descriptions of each species;
- images;
- guides on how to distinguish the different species;
- maps based on specimens whose identifications have been verified;
- information about the names of each species;
- and more.
And it is all freely-accessible!
The fern treatments were authored by Te Papa botanists Patrick Brownsey and Leon Perrie. They are the result of the study of thousands of dried, pressed specimens stored in collections like those of Auckland Museum, Landcare Research, and Te Papa.
More on Te Papa’s collection of plant specimens.
Te Papa’s botanists are currently working on several more contributions to the eFloraNZ. Treatments for the fern families Gleicheniaceae, Cyatheaceae, Ophioglossaceae, Thelypteridaceae, and Hymenophyllaceae, and New Zealand’s largest flowering plant genus, Veronica, are all at advanced stages of preparation. Expect to see these within the next couple of years.
Blog post on preparation of the Gleicheniaceae eFloraNZ treatment.
Blog post about our work on the stumpy tree fern, Dicksonia lanata.
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