State Botany Division Has Vast Stores Of Information

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27463, 24 September 1954, Page 14

State Botany Division Has Vast Stores Of Information

Even those whose study of practical botany ended with the pressing of pansies in the leaves of ageing diaries would derive considerable satisfaction from a tour of the new headquarters of the Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The division moved from Wellington recently, and now occupies what was formerly a pleasant residence on the eastern side of Latimer square.

The division is the authority to which other Government departments turn for identification of plants, for the basic knowledge required for the conduct of i esearch, and on dozens of other diverse problems. In the new headquarters there are many thousands of samples of plants and seeds and pollens, but perhaps the key to the whole work is the reference library—a very real working tool, not a museum. It contains many works in Latin, for botany is the only science in which Latin is still compulsory. This is understandable, for if descriptions of new plants, in scientific language, were to be undertaken in Chinese, Greek, Russian, and Hindustani, there would be a strong possibility of confusion. Clear descriptions are vital, for there are more than 250,000 green plants in the world, apart from all other types. 18th Century Reference Book One of the basic books of reference is Linnaeus’s “Species Plantarum,” first published in 1764, and this is used in a complex but astoundingly accurate system of identification. Each year, the division receives thousands of inquiries about the identification of plants, but it does not deal directly with the public. Inquiries received by the Department of Agriculture, the Cawthron Institute, and many other bodies are sent on to the division.

One example of the variety of information the division has in its possession is the collection of nearly 2000 maps showing the disposition of every vascular plant in north-west Europe. But there are many other such examples. Next to the library is a room, formerly a sunroom, where it is hoped to have a reading room for accredited students. In the grounds, there are plots set aside for conveniently holding plants under observation. In the division’s herbarium, there is a quick system of reference to the 100,000 specimens which have been expertly pressed and packed and filed away, and this might be regarded as one of the most important aspects of the work. There is much of interest there. There are two leaves of dracophyllum, a mountain plant taken at Dusky Sound by J. R. Forster and G. Forster, botanists with Captain Cook. These samples are from the original at Kew.

Only nine years ago, the herbarium was no more than half its present size, but expansion has not been the only problem. The herbarium keeper (Mr T. W. Rawson) says it is necessary to wage constant war against the variety of insects brought in- with green specimens, and also against book-lice and borer. Each plant to be stored away for reference is first poisoned with mercuric chloride. If this substance is handled with some care, it is hardly to be wondered at, for Mr Rawson says that a pin head could hold enough of the poison to kill a man.

Corrugated sheets of aeroplane aluminium are used in pressing plants; a number of them one on top of the other are firmly bound with leather

straps and the whole bundle placed r in a warm air cabinet adapted from i domestic drying cabinet. In another part of the building, Mia i M. Simpson deals with the facton affecting the establishment of tussock in depleted areas. There are long rowt i of jars containing New Zealand seeds, and these are used for exchange with countries all over the world. Many of the specimens have been collected by Miss Simpson herself. She i is a keen tramper, and when on holiday tramping trips has been unabk to leave her work completely behind. . She has gathered seeds from Molesworth, Ruapehu, North Auckland, and many other places. At Arthur’s P® this ’ year, she found a sample of Hectorella caespitosa, an alpine pint which had been taken only once before. On the roof of a tall office building in Christchurch, the division has a sort ' of anemometer with a jellied plate on the business end of it, to determine the incidence and types of pollen bein? i carried in the air. Information found ? in this way is a help to the Depotment of Agriculture in dealing wife ; apiarists’ problems, for it is possible ■ to determine what source bees art i working at particular times. Here i Mr N. T. Moar is in charge. He has !:• for reference some 3000 slides of native i. pollens, and more than 2000 slides of ' pollens found in peat. The division’s investigators extract peat from 30 feet or more below tbj surface of the ground. Peat pollens help to unravel the story qf New Zealand vegetation 10,000 jWrs or more ago, and that helps with present-day problems.. The division has its own artist (Miss Nancy Adams), whose bright murab < above the stairways are a pleasant introduction to the division’s activities. In her department there are engravings from copper plates made Cook’s first expedition. The illustaw tions vary from these to a coUedj®!! of Chatham Islands forget-me-A done last year. Scope of Division’s Work The director of the division (MrC M. Smith) explained that the Government had many botanists dealing wih the application of botany to industry, in its broad sense, and dealing wii ad hoc problems. The division did nt encroach on that work. It was a dipartmental reservoir of available to tanical knowledge, although it did deal with the public. Its particuls job was to keep checking all nev generalisations against local, parties lar cases. The evolution of botanical know ledge had four phases, Mr Smith said —the garden or farm, the herbarium, the laboratory, the field. No one phase superseded the others, but it was superimposed on them. Most applied botany concentrated on the first and third phases. The division had an officer attending an international botanical congress in Paris, another n> Wellington dealing entirely with grasses, two more engaged in helping in the preparation of an up-to-date issue of a standard reference work, others at Molesworth, and two at Lincoln on cytological work. The division had 10 acres in Greers road, Bryndwr; which it hoped to use as a garden for controlled selection and rejection field work, before sampler were given a more extended trial, Mf Smith said.