Botanist to spend year in Canada

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33060, 30 October 1972, Page 14

Botanist to spend year in Canada

A taxonomic botanist on the staff of the Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Christchurch, Dr D. R. Given, will spend a year at the National Museum of Natural Sciences at Ottawa, Canada, under a post-doctoral research fellowship awarded by the National Research Council of Canada.

Dr Given, who gained his Ph, D, in 1970 for taxonomic studies in the genus Celmisia —the mountain daisy, of which there are about 60 species in New Zealand and Australia—and who has published several papers on the subject, hopes that his Canadian experience, in which he will work under Dr J. H. Soper, chief botanist at the museum, will be of considerable help to him in work he is doing with the genus. In Canada, Dr Given will work on the distribution and classification of plant species whose geographic distribution has been affected by patterns of glaciation. Dr Soper has pioneered some of the techniques of mapping distribution patterns by computer, and Dr Given says that some of these techniques and methods can be applied to the study of alpine plants in New Zealand. He

hopes to examine some groups of plants related to Celmisia, such groups in Canada including the aster and erigeron. For several years, Dr Given has corresponded with Dr Soper, not only because of his interest in Celmisia, but also in relation to fems and allied plants. Dr Soper has published papers on these in Canada, and Dr Given hopes that his visit will also enable him to obtain a background to ferns in North America.

Dr Given, who has been on the staff of the Botany Division since the end of 1965, was bom in Nelson, and was educated at Nelson College and Canterbury University. With his wife and infant daughter, he will leave for Canada early in January. After his stay there, he hopes to return through Britain and Europe.