Te Papa Botany Curator Leon Perrie will introduce the herbarium collection, showcase its highlights and discuss how it is used.
See plants collected during Cook’s first Pacific voyage, engravings from Joseph Banks’ Florilegium, and other treasures!
The Botany Collection comprises some 350,000 dried plant specimens, with about 1,500 added annually. It is one of Te Papa’s biggest collections and is a major underpinning of botanical research in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is supported by an active volunteer programme.
About the speaker
Leon Perrie‘s research focuses on New Zealand’s ferns: their numbers, locations and identification. He has used DNA analyses to address this work and such questions as how ferns are related to one another and to species overseas. He was a contributing author for the Ferns and Lycophytes series for the online Flora of New Zealand. He also works on Pacific ferns, and has studied other plant groups, particularly Pseudopanax (lancewoods and five fingers).
Please note numbers are limited, so book now to avoid disappointment!
There are two tours, for further information and to register:
- Afternoon, 4:00–6:00 pm: www.friendsoftepapa.org.nz/event/back-of-house-botany-collection-tour-2-2
- Evening, 5:30–6:30 pm: www.friendsoftepapa.org.nz/event/back-of-house-botany-collection-tour-3
Related content
This article introduces Leon Perrie when the Science Learning Hub first interviewed him in 2010 for our ferns collection of resources.
Discover more about the importance of plant collections in museums, then find out how botany curators at Te Papa collect, describe and catalogue native plants in the article Documenting New Zealand’s Ferns.
Meet 18th Century European naturalists Joseph Banks and David Solander – over 250 years ago they were part of Captain’s Cook first voyage to New Zealand.
Did you know that 82% of New Zealand plants are endemic – they are not found anywhere else in the world, find out more here.
