Field-work is one of the best aspects of working as a Natural
Environment curator at Te Papa. I get to spend about three weeks
a year in the field collecting plant specimens. I’ve recently
returned from ten days field-work in the South Island,
collecting samples for our research on lancewood (horoeka,
Pseudopanax crassifolius) and fierce lancewood (P. ferox). This
is in collaboration with Lara Shepherd from Massey University.
Lancewood is a common forest tree and we are using DNA analyses
to determine where it survived in New Zealand during the last
glacial period. This follows our previous research on the forest
fern Hooker’s spleenwort (Asplenium hookerianum), which seems to
have survived throughout New Zealand, and conflicts with
evidence that Metrosideros trees (rata and pohutukawa) were
confined to only a few refugia. Fierce lancewood, named for its
bigger ‘teeth’ on the leaf margins, is more sparsely distributed
that lancewood. Given the discontinuous distribution of fierce
lancewood, we expected each p