BOTANISTS TRIP

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31018, 25 March 1966, Page 12

BOTANISTS TRIP

Fems Of New Caledonia

When Mr G. Brownlie, senior lecturer in botany at the University of Canterbury,

made two visits to New Caledonia to compare ferns there with those in New Zealand, he discovered that no systematic record had been made in the French colony, apart from “a collector’s list” in 1873.

When he made records for his own purposes, the French Natural History Museum in Paris became interested and it has now invited him to prepare a complete record of the ferns on New Caledonia. Mr Brownlie will leave soon for Paris on an Erskine fellowship of the university to study type material (standard reference plants) in Paris, in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the British Museum of Natural History in London, and the University of Zurich. He will also visit a private collector in Holland.

Mr Brownlie said yesterday that he hoped to produce a series-by-series account of all the ferns of New Caledonia which would be invaluable to his work in New Zealand because some of these were “relic flora”—the last of a type surviving in the Pacific area.