Nancy Adams was one of New Zealand’s most prolific botanists and a talented artist. She made substantial contributions to Te Papa’s herbarium collection and produced a vast number of botanical illustrations, which were included in widely distributed and well-regarded books about New Zealand flora. As part of their summer research, Lucia Adams and Margo Montes de Oca spent some time looking through several of Nancy’s field guides which were published as part of the ‘Mobil New Zealand Nature Series’ – in particular, Mountain Flowers in New Zealand (1980) and New Zealand Native Trees (1967). You may recognise these books – they are beautiful, helpful and accessible guides to plants in the New Zealand bush.
In her introduction to Mountain Flowers in New Zealand, Nancy provides beautiful descriptions of several alpine locations around the country – including the Tararua Range, Marlborough, Canterbury, the Central Plateau, and Fiordland National Park – and suggests where and when mountain flowers might be found in these areas. She encourages readers to explore these ecosystems with care and admiration:
As well as producing Mountain Flowers in New Zealand, Nancy collaborated with her friend and renowned botanist Sir Alan Mark to publish a comprehensive guide to mountain flora, New Zealand Alpine Plants, in 1973.
Intrepid exploration
During the course of her career, Nancy travelled extensively around Aotearoa, often accompanied by friends and colleagues like Sir Alan Mark. Her field trips would take her from the very top to the very bottom of the country, and from mountaintop to seashore.
The map below shows all the locations in which Nancy collected specimens for the herbarium from 1943–1991: over 3,320 specimens in total. Several of these locations seemed to have been particular favourites of hers, warranting repeat visits. For example, in our previous blog, ‘Nancy Adams on Rakiura / Stewart Island’, we detailed her returning trips to Lonnekers Nugget, Rakiura.
On these expeditions, Nancy would write her observations in meticulously organised notebooks, collect specimens for the herbarium, and sometimes sketch or paint plants on the go, for inclusion in her future more polished artworks. These trips and some of the plants Nancy saw are also documented in photographs, taken either by Nancy herself or by one of her companions.
Alpine field trips
Nancy sketched and photographed hundreds of mountain plants during her 1967-68 expeditions with Alan Mark and his family while working on Alpine Plants, and on later trips while writing Mountain Flowers. Many of these sketches would become watercolour paintings, which would appear as plates in these field guides.
A favourite alpine location of Nancy’s – perhaps because of its relative proximity to Wellington – was the National Park area, in particular Mount Ruapehu. She would visit many times over the course of her career to botanise, take photos and make drawings of the plants there. On one trip in 1963, she took a particular interest in Euphrasia cuneata and Veronica spathulata, which she painted and included in New Zealand Alpine Plants.
Some of the most dramatic landscapes captured in Nancy’s photographic archive are of the South Island. One of her longest documented trips was in December 1959, the year she began working as an artist for the Dominion Museum. Accompanied by her friend and fellow artist Sue Skerman, she travelled from Dunedin to Te Anau, traversing Fiordland National Park with stops along the way including Key Summit, the Cleddau Valley, and Eglinton Valley.
In this photo, Nancy stands next to the mighty obelisks on Old Man Range, Kopuwai Conservation Area, Otago in 1968. On this trip, she took an interest in the tiny white flowers of Myosotis pulvinaris, an endemic mountain forget-me-not, and she managed to capture in watercolour the cushion-like growth habit of this plant.
Nancy also spent a lot of time exploring the alpine ecosystems at the top of the South Island, collecting about 40 specimens from this area for the Te Papa herbarium. Some of her favourite locations were Lake Rotoiti and Lake Sylvester. Lake Sylvester is a large alpine lake situated at the top of a mountain range above Cobb Valley which hosts the tiny Celmisia alpina, described by Nancy as growing in ‘boggy ground [near the] edges of the tarns”.
From one trip to Lake Rotoiti in 1980 there are a few unfinished sketches by Nancy, including this one of mountain snowberry (Gaultheria sp.), a common and edible berry in alpine regions of New Zealand.
Spotlight on mountain daisies
We noticed that one alpine flower genus appeared time and time again in Nancy’s collection – the mountain daisy, or Celmisia. She collected seven different species of Celmisia for the Te Papa herbarium and illustrated 42 different species (including two hybrids) for New Zealand Alpine Plants.
Nancy’s careful use of white paint on the leaves of her Celmisia illustrations helps to evoke their texture, which is often fluffy and soft.
Our field trip to the alpine garden at Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush
While we didn’t quite have time to retrace Nancy’s footsteps up and down the mountains of New Zealand, we wanted to look at some of the alpine flowers she discovered, collected and sketched on her field trips. We decided to take a (much shorter) journey to the alpine garden at Ōtari-Wilton Reserve, where some experts guided us towards some particularly beautiful species. This is a very special garden – not least of all because you can see native mountain plants right here in Wellington! We loved it and highly recommend a visit.
We were happy to see several of the alpine species that Nancy had collected and illustrated growing in the public garden there. We were also lucky enough to be shown the nursery behind the scenes at Ōtari, where a greenhouse hosts an impressive variety of Celmisia with the goal of introducing them to the garden and eventually distributing them around New Zealand. One species in particular, Celmisia ‘Mangaweka’, has been extinct in the wild since 2014 and Ōtari is working to revive its population.
Reflection
While researching for this blog we were struck by the breadth of Nancy’s travels over her lifetime, and by her tenacity as an alpine explorer despite suffering an attack of polio in her 20s. Working at high altitudes and in sometimes harsh conditions, Nancy managed to canvas an impressive swathe of New Zealand’s national parks and mountainous areas, contributing botanical collections and illustrations to a comprehensive record of Aotearoa’s alpine plant ecosystems over the decades she was working.
We loved finding connections between Nancy’s journals, the photographic record of her expeditions, her illustrations and publications, and the dated collection specimens in the herbarium. Placing them in relation to each other helped us not only to gain insight into her interests and process during her many field trips but also to further appreciate the ease and talent with which she was able to move between art, friendship and science. Her love and appreciation for all plants – including alpine flowers – is infectious, and her work continues to influence scientific restoration efforts. We are so grateful to have been given the opportunity once again this summer to investigate and ponder Nancy’s remarkable archives.
Acknowledgements
We thank Tim Park and Jane Humble for giving us a guided tour of the alpine garden at the Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush. Thanks also to Jennifer Twist at Te Papa’s Archives for sharing collection material with us.
Further reading
- Adams, Nancy Mary on Te Ara – Encyclopedia of New Zealand (Adams, Nancy Mary – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – Te Ara).
- Adams, Nancy. Mountain Flowers in New Zealand. Wellington: Reed, 1980.
- Mark, A. (2007). Obituary: (Jacqueline) Nancy Mary Adams, CBE, QSO. 1926–2007. New Zealand Journal of Botany, 45(3), 515–519. https://doi.org/10.1080/00288250709509735
- Susan Skerman, Te Papa collections https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/agent/2101
- Susan Skerman’s work on Bush Scene, Osaka Expo in 1970 Bush scene at Osaka Expo 70 – Exhibitions and world’s fairs – Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Thank you for this blog. I still have Nancy Adamsʻ two books from the 1960s in my library. I learned much from them as a teenager and budding botanist, hiking and camping in many of the same places as her. As the years go by, I still treasure them, even though Iʻve lived outside NZ for 60+ years. Her artistry is outstanding.