Skirts, scales, hexagons, and colour. There are many differences you can look out for if you want to learn how to identify tree ferns.Read more
Botanist Leon Perrie recently posted about the desirability of minimising taxonomic name changes. He writes here about the need to change the name of a fern to reflect its newly discovered evolutionary relationships.Read more
What is an appropriate amount of change in our scientific classification of life? Botany Curator Leon Perrie ponders this using the kiokio and its fern relatives as an example.Read more
Over 7–9 April, Te Papa is helping to host New Zealand’s first symposium dedicated to citizen science – the involvement of the community in scientific research.Read more
This is a series on five major election issues seen through the eyes of the national museum. In the lead-up to the 2017 General Election, we have linked each of these issues to an object, or a programme, run by Te Papa. In this post, Curator Botany Leon Perrie writesRead more
Congratulations to Pat Brownsey who has just been awarded the New Zealand Journal of Botany annual prize for 2016. In even-numbered years, this prize is for “established researchers”. This is “awarded to a person who has made a sustained contribution to the journal during the last five years (regularly publishingRead more
Finding and naming new species is a core part of the job for Te Papa’s scientists. More than 2500 animal and plant species have been named by museum staff since 1865. A recent example is the fern Asplenium lepidotum, described by myself and Pat Brownsey. This brings the number ofRead more
Gully fern, also called pākauroharoha and Pneumatopteris pennigera, is one of the most common ferns in New Zealand. You’ll have almost certainly seen it if you’ve ever walked in a New Zealand forest. It occurs from the north of the North Island to the south of the South Island (althoughRead more
Filmy ferns add a delicate, enveloping beauty to New Zealand’s forests. Most are translucent, with fronds only one or a few cells thick. Most are small, but they can carpet large areas of the ground or be prominent on the trunks of trees. New Zealand is home to 31 speciesRead more
Please note: This fern has since been named. The You Called Me What?! exhibition celebrates 150 years of scientific discovery at Te Papa. A big part of this has been the scientific naming of more than 2500 animal and plant species by museum staff since 1865. We’re now giving youRead more
Are you getting out and about these Christmas holidays? Then we’ve got the ideal FREE gift for you – the eFloraNZ chapter on the scaly tree ferns. eFloraNZ chapter for Cyathea, the scaly tree ferns. (pdf, 13 MB.) You’ll find scaly tree ferns almost everywhere in New Zealand where thereRead more
A highlight of my recent South Island fieldwork was helping to survey the last remaining New Zealand population of the liverwort Petalophyllum preissii. It’s a distinctive looking plant, a bit like a little lettuce, and about the size of a fingernail. Seeing it was special because I likely won’t have theRead more
