Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp last week

Yesterday afternoon I was at the #ChristchurchBotanicGardens, with an undergrad student at #LincolnUniversityNZ who will be interning at the garden during the next teaching semester. Luke Martin, the curator of the native section of the garden, gave us a fascinating tour behind the scenes of the garden's native nursery, seed bank, and herbarium.

A lot of work is being done at the Gardens to learn about and safeguard Aotearoa New Zealand's botanical taonga. New natural history knowledge is being figured out about Canterbury's most threatened native plants so they can be kept safe in the seed bank and glasshouses, in case some of the Department of Conservation's valiant efforts in the wild fail.

Some of Canterbury's most threatened plant species only exist in the wild in patches of a few square metres in remnant vegetation on private farmland. The work Luke and colleagues are doing may prove exceptionally important for the survival of some of these species.

There's a lot more to the botanic gardens than a place to see pretty flowers.

#Christchurch#NZ #botany#ChristchurchBotanicGardens#BotanicGarden

A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.