User:MattBuys/sandbox

History
Plant samples brought in to the staff at Rotorua for identification during the time of the National Forest Survey, a survey of New Zealand’s indigenous forest for merchantable timber resources, begun in 1946 and taking 10 years to complete (Masters et al. 1957, Kininmonth 1997), formed the nucleus of the collection.

Mick (A.C.) Forbes, a State Forest Service botanist, set up the herbarium which he managed together with the library in addition to running botany and tree identification courses for the Forestry Training Centre (Klitscher 1997). When Kath Bibby arrived in 1949 to work in the herbarium, the specimens were in piles around the room (pers. comm.). By March 1950 the herbarium was reported as having “3,200 specimens well mounted, recorded and indexed” (NZFS 1950).

From 1956 to 1966 the New Zealand Forest Service carried out a second major survey of the indigenous forests, the Ecological Survey. It was concerned with mapping and describing forest types based on ecological characteristics and led to the production in the following years of the New Zealand Forest Service Forest Class and Forest Type Maps. These detailed forest classification maps with associated forest descriptions were prepared by John Nicholls and Dudley Franklin. After the survey the associated plant reference collection was incorporated into the herbarium at Rotorua.

Study of particular conifer groups prevailed during the 1950s and early 1960s, and herbarium growth was slow, with emphasis on exotic species (NZFS 1958). Research interest in selection of potential new plantation species for New Zealand to replace the rapidly decreasing resource of indigenous timber, resulted in a trip to Mexico by Hugo (H. V.) Hinds and Egon Larsen in 1959-60 to collect seeds of the Mexican pines (Hinds & Larsen 1961). Voucher specimens were collected and later added to the herbarium.

In 1966 Barbara Knowles instigated revival of the herbarium, which had gradually fallen into disuse after Kath Bibby’s departure, and had been put into storage. Then followed extensive collection of specimens from parks, gardens and forests throughout New Zealand, particularly by Barbara, as part of an effort to record exotic tree species present.

Eucalypts featured prominently in collections from the mid 1950s onwards, and include specimens from early plantings on farms and plantations sampled by Harry Bunn, and the valuable record of extensive collecting trips to Australia by Mike Wilcox in 1981 and 1986 (Wilcox, M. D. 1982). Chris Ecroyd added to these with eucalypts from Western Australian visits in 1994 and 1996.

During the 1970s and 1980s emphasis on ecological studies and the location in Rotorua of ecologists and botanists from government departments such as Botany Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) led to vouchering of many records in the herbarium, particularly from the central North Island. These records included well preserved plant fragments from a “buried forest” at Pureora which date back eighteen hundred years to the time of the last Taupo volcanic eruption (Clarkson et al. 1992). Some more recent vouchers for Protected Natural Area surveys from the central North Island and the East Coast are incorporated as are records from a current project on biodiversity in plantation forests at several North Island and South Island sites.

Specimens predating the NZFRI herbarium have been acquired from gifts and exchanges of specimens. These include some eucalypts from various private collections dating from the early 1900s, and the earliest collected specimen, Potomogeton ochreatus, an exchange duplicate collected by H. Carse in 1899 from the Waikato River. Private collections gifted from former forestry students including Mike Wilcox, John Hobbs, Dudley Franklin, Bob Fenton, and Tony Haslett were valuable additions.

Small numbers of foreign shrub and tree specimens from beyond Australasia have occasionally been received, often from their natural range, making possible useful comparisons with New Zealand-grown material. Pacific Island visits by staff members created opportunities to make collections of forest species from Vanuatu, Samoa and Fiji.

The herbarium has often been involved in host identification for pests and diseases recorded in forest and border surveillance programmes. The hosts added from this work include garden plants as well as plantation forest trees and adventive species.

Curators

 * 1) Mick (A.C.) Forbes
 * 2) Kath Bibby
 * 3) Martin Bannister
 * 4) Barbara Knowles
 * 5) Dianne O’Donnell
 * 6) Chris Ecroyd
 * 7) Matt H. Buys