PERUVIAN PLANTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23529, 18 June 1938, Page 29

PERUVIAN PLANTS

SIMILAR TO NEW ZEALAND’S WOMAN BOTANIST’S DISCOVERY (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON. May 21. A woman with an interesting occupation, but one which many might find rather too arduous, is Miss Dora Stafford, a botanist, who recently returned to London from Peru. She has brought back a thousand specimens of plants and a big collection of photographs. Miss Stafford says that perhaps the most interesting scientific fact about the species is that they are very like New Zealand species, which suggests to her that there may once have been a connection between New Zealand and Peru. The trip Was undertaken largely for the Kew authorities. The specimens are all dried and mostly come from great heights. On one occasion Miss Stafford made her collections at just over 19,000 ft. At nights she found it bitterly cold. Often she slept out in a sleeping bag on the bare ground, sometimes without even the shelter of a tent.