Title: Early New Zealand Botanical Art

Author: F. Bruce Sampson

Publication details: Reed Methuen, 1985, Auckland

Digital publication kindly authorised by: F. Bruce Sampson

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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Early New Zealand Botanical Art

The Kew Years

The Kew Years

Joseph and his family moved into what is now Herbarium House, Kew, where they lived for the next ten years. Joseph Hooker worked on a variety of topics and wrote important papers on the botany of the Galapagos Islands from specimens collected by Charles Darwin and others. The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage was completed and an incomplete Flora Indica (with T Thomson) appeared. Much later (1875-97) the monumental seven-volume The Flora of British India was written by Hooker, assisted by others. In 1860 Joseph spent three months botanising with Daniel Hanbury in what is now Israel, Syria and the Lebanon. This led to several papers, including one on cedars (Cedrus).

Genera Plantarum, one of the greatest works in botany, was begun by Joseph Hooker with George Bentham, a botanist of independent means. Publication began in 1862 and was completed in 1883. This gigantic undertaking brought together the mass of information on seed plants in systematic order, down to the level of each genus. It was written entirely in Latin, and by the time it was completed Bentham had written over one million words and Hooker about half a million. An important event in New Zealand botany was the publication in 1864 of the first part of Hooker's (unillustrated) Handbook of the New Zealand Flora. It covered ferns and their allies, conifers and flowering plants. The text contains, in addition to the description of each plant, references to the literature and keys to families, genera and species. The second part, describing algae, fungi, lichens, mosses and liverworts, appeared in 1867.

William Hooker died on 12 August 1865, aged eighty, after a few days' illness, and within three months Joseph Hooker was appointed director of Kew. His work as assistant director had made him thoroughly familiar page 79 with the work done at Kew and he brought great enthusiasm towards directing the gardens. Despite heavy administrative duties, which he conscientiously performed, and outside duties, such as those involved with being president of the Royal Society from 1873 to 1878, Joseph Hooker continued with his botanical studies and publications with little diminution of pace. In 1870 his Students' Flora of the British Isles first appeared. It has been described by a Kew botanist, the late Dr W. B. Turrill, author of an interesting book on Hooker (Joseph Dalton HookerBotanist, Explorer, and Administrator), as "one of the best of British floras ever to have been published as a single volume".

In 1871 Hooker and three others visited Morocco, and an account by Hooker and another member of the party, John Ball, appeared in 1878 as Journal of a Tour to Marocco [sic] and the Great Atlas. In 1881 an even bigger task than Genera Plantarum was begun under Joseph Hooker's direction, with financial support from Charles Darwin. This was Index Kewensis, which is continued in the form of supplements today. The aim of the Index was to list all the names that had been used for plants, giving the author of each and the place of publication. At first a judgment was made as to which was the valid name for a plant, with those considered synonymous in brackets. This differentiation was dropped in 1913 so that Index Kewensis is now an index and not an authority for the botanical correctness of the name of a particular plant. The first four volumes appeared in 1892-95.

In 1874 Joseph's wife, Frances, died. It had been a happy marriage and he was fortunate two years later to begin another happy marriage to Hyacinth, widow of Sir William Jardine. They produced two sons, born in 1877 and 1885. To Joseph's disappointment, none of his children became botanists, though his sons did well in a variety of careers. In 1877, the year he was knighted in the Order of the Star of India, Joseph took part in his last major botanical expedition. The trip, which lasted some three months, was undertaken with his old friend Asa Gray (1810-88). Asa Gray, who first visited the Hookers in 1838, had been professor of natural history at Harvard (1842-73) and was then regent of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC. He was the foremost United States plant taxonomist of his time. Gray and Hooker were particularly interested in the relationships and history of the North American flora. They botanised extensively in the Rockies, on one occasion sleeping out at 13,000 feet (4,000 metres). During their travels they visited Salt Lake City, where they "had a chat" with Brigham Young, head of the Mormon Church, who reminded Joseph of "a stout, elderly and thoroughly respectable butler", though his opinion of the sect was a very low one! He visited too the forests of the eastern United States, and several interesting papers resulted from the US visit.

He retired as director of Kew near the end of 1885, aged sixty-nine, and his son-in-law, William Thiselton-Dyer, who had become assistant director in 1875, was made director. Retirement gave Joseph more time to page 80 devote to his research. He had purchased a six-acre plot of land in Berkshire, where he built a large, comfortable house ("The Camp"). The surrounding woodlands contained many of the rhododendrons he had discovered in Sikkim. For many years he commuted to Kew three or four days a week to work in the herbarium and library. In his last years Joseph Hooker tackled the taxonomy of a difficult group of plants, the balsams (Impatiens), most of which occur in Asia. He described 303 new species and was still working on the group a few weeks before he died, aged ninety-four, on 10 December 1911.

An offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was made to his family, but in accordance with his wishes, Joseph was buried in the family grave beside his father in St Anne's Churchyard, Kew, a few yards from the director's house. One of his hobbies had been to collect Wedgwood china, especially medallions, a pursuit that had amused Charles Darwin, who, though related to the Wedgwoods by both descent and marriage, had little interest in the china. In 1865 Joseph had commissioned a Wedgwood memorial medallion of Sir William, a task that took the sculptor, Thomas Woolner, and Hooker's cousin, Reginald Palgrave, nearly two years. It was therefore appropriate that his own memorial plaque in Kew Church, where William's is located, was made of Wedgwood jasper ware. It was designed by his cousin Matilda Smith. Below the words on the plaque is a portrait of Joseph (from a model by Frank Bouchier), surrounded by five plants from five countries whose floras he had been interested in. One of them is Celmisia vernicosa from New Zealand. A marble bust of Joseph Hooker, also by Frank Bouchier, is in Westminster Abbey.

The Hookers have been dealt with at length, even though only Joseph visited New Zealand and then only for a few months. However, their influence on botany, including New Zealand botany and botanical illustration, has been profound. The artists they trained, Walter and John Fitch and Matilda Smith, devoted considerable time to illustrating New Zealand plants and set standards that served as models for others. William Hooker described many of our plants, especially the lower groups, for the first time, and laid the basis for Joseph Hooker to produce the first illustrated New Zealand flora in English {Flora Novae-Zelandiae) and then his Handbook of the New Zealand Flora, which was the foundation of all the floras that followed. Joseph Hooker also served as a catalyst to inspire others to collect and describe plants. This was especially true for botanists in New Zealand. As the distinguished botanist Leonard Cockayne noted in an obituary on Joseph Hooker {Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, 1911):

The indebtedness of New Zealand science does not end with Hooker's published work. To all serious investigators of the flora he was a friend, guide, and counsellor. There is, indeed, no name of moment in the later botany of the Dominion but is deeply indebted to Hooker's influence and assistance, generously given.

page 81

Plate 23 Hedycarya arborea (pigeonwood or porokaiwhiri)

This painting illustrates nearly mature fruits on a female tree. As the name suggests, the fruits are a favourite diet of the New Zealand pigeon, and the Maori name porokaiwhiri means "pigeon-food" tree. When fruits are fully mature they are a deeper orange. The coarsely toothed leaves are arranged in pairs, with each pair at right angles to the preceding pair. Pigeonwood is a medium-sized tree up to fifteen metres high, which occurs up to 800 metres altitude in the North Island, and reaches Banks Peninsula on the east coast and Milford Sound on the west coast of the South Island.

Courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand

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Plate 23 Hedycarya arborea J. R. et G. Forst. (pigeonwood) Martha King

Plate 23 Hedycarya arborea J. R. et G. Forst. (pigeonwood) Martha King

Plate 24 Rhabdothamnus solandri (matata)

This is a slender, branching shrub reaching two metres high, found near streams in lowland forest. Especially common in the Auckland district, it reaches as far south as Wellington. Flower colour varies from yellow to orange to red, with darker stripes. The genus Rhabdothamnus consists of a single species restricted to New Zealand and is a member of the mostly tropical and subtropical family Gesneriaceae, which includes the African violet (Saintpaulia). As shown in the separate illustration at left, the petals form a cylindrical tube, which has a five-lobed tip. The five stamens are fused at their bases to the petal tube and curve to meet at their tips so that their pollen-bearing anthers are fused together. Martha King has illustrated, to the right of the dissected petal-tube, a flower after the stamens and tube have fallen. It shows five green sepals and a central ovary with a terminal, hair-like style.

Courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand

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Plate 24 Rhabdothamnus solandri A. Cunn. (matata) Martha King

Plate 24 Rhabdothamnus solandri A. Cunn. (matata) Martha King

Plate 25 Pseudowintera axillaris (lowland horopito)

I have chosen a painting by Fanny Osborne that has not been illustrated in Jeanne Goulding's book. Lowland horopito is a member of the Winteraceae, which is generally considered to contain more primitive features than any other extant family of flowering plants. Pollen grains of this group, which are usually grouped together in permanent fours, have been found as fossils in New Zealand and Australia as far back as the Cretaceous. This period, which began about 135 million years ago, is the one in which flowering plants are thought to have first evolved. Primitive features in the Winteraceae include the nature of the flowers and of the wood — which lacks vessels, the specialised, water-conducting, cellular tubes found in all but about 100 of the approximately 250,000 species of flowering plants.

Lowland horopito is a small tree, up to ten metres tall, which grows in the forest understorey. It occurs from just south of North Cape to northern Marlborough and Nelson. Although it can grow from sea level to 850 metres altitude, it is uncommon above 600 metres. The elliptical leaves are a glossy, dark green above and greyish-green to greyish-white underneath. Leaves have a pungent, spicy taste and a camphorlike odour when crushed. They are unpalatable to deer, goats, pigs and oppossums. Consequently, in forests that have been heavily browsed by these introduced mammals, lowland horopito can be very abundant.

As the painting shows, one to several flowers are situated in the axil of a leaf or leaf scar. Each flower consists of a small, green cup of fused sepals (visible on the flower shown from underneath near the centre of the illustration), which enclose the base of a ring of four to ten greenish-white or white petals. There are eight to twenty broad, short stamens, each with four terminal pollen sacs. In the centre of the flower are one to five yellow-green or reddish carpels, which ripen into fruits. Mature fruits page 82 are reddish-orange berries up to eight millimetres in diameter, which are eaten by tuis {Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae), bellbirds (Anthornis melanura), waxeyes (Zoster-ops lateralis) and yellow-crowned parakeets (Cyanoramphus auriceps). Recently, it was observed that the ripe fruits of lowland horopito were eaten by the stitchbird (Notiomystis cineta), an endangered species now restricted to Little Barrier Island.

Lowland horopito occurs naturally on Great Barrier Island, and Fanny Osborne's painting is presumably of a plant collected there. Pseudowintera is endemic to New Zealand. There are two other species: mountain horopito, Pseudowintera colorata, which has characteristic light-green or yellow leaves with reddish spots or blotches and red margins, and Pseudowintera traversii, a small-leaved (one to three centimetres) shrub, confined to forest and scrub at 700 to 1,000 metres altitude in a small region of the northwest of the South Island.

Courtesy of the Director of the Auckland Institute and Museum

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Plate 25 Pseudowintera axillaris J. R. et G. Forst. Dandy, (lowland horopito) Fanny Osborne

Plate 25 Pseudowintera axillaris J. R. et G. Forst. Dandy, (lowland horopito) Fanny Osborne

Plate 26 Ehrharta stipoides (Microlaena stipoides) (meadow rice grass)

This slender perennial grass occurs in lowland regions of the North Island and in localised parts of the South Island, chiefly near the sea, and in Stewart Island. It is widely distributed in Australia and Tasmania. John Buchanan noted that it is a valuable pasture grass, "closely cropped by horses, cattle and sheep". It has the ability to withstand considerable drought. A related species with larger leaves, Ehrharta diplax {Microlaena avenacea), is probably the most abundant forest grass in New Zealand.

Figure 1, the grass with inflorescences, natural size; figure 2, an enlarged spikelet; figure 3, an enlarged floret (flower) from a spikelet; figures 4 to 7, enlarged non-reproductive parts of spikelets; figure 8, enlarged female part of flower (ovary and paired stigmas); figure 9, the enlarged grain (fruit).

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Plate 26 Ehrharta stipoides Labill. (meadow rice grass) John Buchanan

Plate 26 Ehrharta stipoides Labill. (meadow rice grass) John Buchanan