Woman Botanist’s Part In New Reference Book

Press, Volume C, Issue 29568, 18 July 1961, Page 2

Woman Botanist’s Part In New Reference Book

Miss L. B. Moore, senior botanist at the Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Lincoln, had the responsibility of bringing to the press the new botanical reference book, “Flora of New Zealand” (volume I), of which the late Dr. H. H. Allan, first director of the division, was author. Miss Moore has been on the staff of the division for 23 years. She was awarded an MJB.E. for her work in botany in 1909.

A graduate of Auckland University College, Miss Moore joined the Botany Division in 1938. She recalls that all the time Dr. Allan was at the division he and other members of the staff were collecting specimens and information with the “Flora” in mind. Dr. Allan’s botanical studies, which were leading towards this end, had, however. started very many years earlier when he was agricultural botany master at Waitaki Boys’ High School and then a teacher at Ashburton High School. While at Ashburton he did a great deal of field work on Mount Peel which earned him his doctorate and brought him in touch with Dr. Leonard Cockayne, an association that eventually led to his transfer to the Department of Agriculture as systematic botanist and then to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to found the Botany Division. But only after his retirement in 1948 was Dr. Allan able to devote his full energies to preparing this work and it was from 1953 that Miss Moore became increasingly associated with him in this work. In 1957 when Dr. Allan died the responsibility of bringing the volume to completion and publication fell to her lot. Wrote Sections Apart from checking scripts and proof-reading. Miss Moore had to write some sections herself. One of these is on the koromikos or native veronicas or Hebe, which form quite a large proportion of the components of river-bed and montane scrub. She also write the section on Myosotis or native forget-me-nots. Miss Moore says that information for the volume has been drawn from many sources and over a very long period of years. The first published catalogue of New Zealand plants was that of J. R. and G. Forster (father and son) who accompanied Captain Cook to New Zealand almost 200 years ago. In more recent times a host of

people have contributed to botanical knowledge of New Zealand. There was a certain Donald Petrie, a school inspector of former days, who travelled the country with a horse and gig stopping here and there to gather specimens. His collection at the Dominion Museum is one of the most comprehensive in existence. He described 180 new species of plants and contributed 64 papers, almost annually for 40 years, to ’The Transactions of the New Zealand Institute" (now Royal Society). There is an interesting story of his rediscovery of a koromiko which had first been identified in difficult country between Taihape and Napier by the missionary botanist, Colenso. Petrie was determined to track down the same plant and his specimen in the Dominion Museum carries a homely story of how he only attained h;S goal after paying a heavy taxi fare. Locating Plants There are also unusual stories of the location of plants. There is the tale of a man who remembered seeing some pretty red berries when he was left on the coast west of Hamilton when he was a boy of 15, while his father went fishing. He often spoke of these berries but it was not until he was 85 that he met someone who did something about them. Then Mr R. O. Green, of Otorohanga. a well-known collector and grower of native plants, trekked along the coast for a day. climbed up a cliff to locate the species, spent the night there and then scrambled down again the next day with young plants to grow in his garden. From these came flowering and fruiting specimens to prove that this slender little plant was related to the ngaio tree. Studies of records of a tiny plant less than an inch long which belongs to the foxglove family showed that with one exception it had always been found in the southernmost portions of the South Island and Stewart Island. The exception was a recording of Professor Arnold Wall having found it on the top of Mount Somers. The researchers felt that by some accident the label on the specimen might have become misplaced. A letter to Professor Wall, however, left the matter in no doubt. He could remember the day and place very vividly and indicated that he had been quietly waiting for 40 odd years for someone to question his rather unusual discovery. Many people from one end of the country to the other have been sufficiently interested and have had enough good will to help those preparing this volume to supplement information from books and collections of dried plants. One of these. Mr R. H. Michie, of Kaitaia, repeatedly made a nine miles walk each way to and from his car to collect flowering plants at Kerr Point, the most northerly point of New Zealand. His name has been attached to one of the plants found in this area—Pittosporum michiei, which is a dwarf matipo. New Plants And of course there are discoveries of new plants. In 1945 a bignonia type of vine and a tree of the mango family were found on Great Island in the Three Kings group by Professor Baylis of Otago University. These are the only two wild specimens of these which are known.

In the following year an expedition eradicated the goats from Great Island and the acting Director of Canterbury Museum, Mr E. G. Turbott, who was with the party, made a record of the depleted vegetation which has formed a basis for the study of the subsequent recovery of growth. Miss Moore was stationed in Wellington until the end of last year when the final scripts for the volume left her hands.

During World War II Miss Moore was engaged in the location of sea-weeds for the extraction of agar and organised early collections of them at first with the help of Maori schools. The agar was needed to replace the supplies previously obtained from Japan and is still processed in a Christchurch factory. She has also been involved in the recording of changes in the vegetation on Molesworth station in the central South Island.