National Indigenous Vascular Plant Checklist Now Available
A new indigenous vascular plant checklist for the New Zealand Botanical Region is now available from the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network. The checklist builds considerably on that published by the Network in 2006, providing a comprehensive summary of the New Zealand indigenous vascular flora. As before, it documents the levels of endemicity, chromosome counts, threat status, and provides a full listing of families, genera, species and lower ranks (a total of 2414 taxa), but it also includes significant improvements on the 2006 listing. A comprehensive introduction details the nature of the New Zealand flora and the New Zealand Botanical Region, discusses phylogenetic relationships in the flora and the arrangement of taxa listed, and provides summary statistics on several aspects of the flora. The checklist of the vascular flora is rearranged to accord with current understanding of plant phylogeny, as documented by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. To aid finding species in the re-arranged phylogenetic list, a cross-referenced alphabetical list is provided. Both versions of the list are also cross-referenced to a detailed and fully referenced concordance documenting and explaining names that have changed since the 2006 listing. The concordance also provides a detailed assessment of 192 species aggregates and information on newly recorded or accepted species, providing an up to date assessment on the progress being made by plant biosystematists to describe our flora. Additional sections provide comments on some other taxa whose names have not changed and also names which have been rejected.
The revised checklist is a ‘must have’ for any person with an interest in the New Zealand flora or its biogeography. Designed to be used as a quick off-the-shelf reference, the checklist has been prepared for the Network in cooperation with the Department of Conservation by Peter J. de Lange and Jeremy Rolfe, who have published a number of books dealing with the New Zealand indigenous flora, and who co-authored, with John Sawyer, the 2006 checklist.
The checklist is available from the Network’s shop:
Price for Network members is $18 (including post and packaging); non-members ($25).
Posted: 13/10/2010