Botanist Plans Book On Neto Caledonia Ferns

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30171, 1 July 1963, Page 13

Botanist Plans Book On Neto Caledonia Ferns

A comprehensive book on the ferns of New Caledonia is being compiled by Mr G. Brownlie, a aenior lecturer in the botany department at Canterbury University. He has just returned from a fiveweek visit to the area collecting material. As well as bringing back some 200 pressed specimens for his own work. Mr Brownlie sent back 50 species of plants, including orchids, for the glasshouses of the Christchurch Botanical Gardens

New Caledonia was especially interesting to the botanist. Mr Brownlie said Relic plants on the island indicated that the area had once been part of a larger land mass, as distinct from the volcanic origins of most Pacific islands. The French authorities were grateful for any information

gathered, because the herbarium of the area was not nearly complete. Officials were more concerned with the pastural and toree’ry potential of the island than the botanical nature of it at the present time The Forestry Department had already established four large nurseries of eucalypti for reafforestation of the island, and their co-operation had been extremely valuable throughout his field trips His book would take some years to complete, much of the type material being available from Paris This, how - ever, had been described from dried specimens by people who. in some case*, had not seen the plants in their environment and it was valuable to study them at first hand, he said.

Before returning to New Zealand Mr Brownlie spent a week in Fiji making a comparative study of the ferns there The only drawback was the speedy air trip back to a Christchurch winter, he said.