News Flash - a New Location For Cook’s Scurvy Grass/Nau (Lepidium Oleraceum) Discovered
The West Coast of the North Island of New Zealand has few islands and even fewer populations of the Acutely Threatened/Nationally Endangered Cook’s Scuvry Grass/Nau (Lepidium oleraceum).Between the Three Kings Islands and the South Wellington Coastline, Cook’s Scurvy Grass has been recently (from the 1990’s) recorded from just eight locations, and at only one, tiny Matapia Island off the Ninety Mile Beach is there a moderately large population. Even that is largely derived from one plant found in the mid 1980’s by Pukenui (Houhora) resident Vic Hensley, who scattered seed and maintained that population until its “Official” discovery in the early 1990’s. South of there scurvy grass is known from Oaia Island off Muriwai (one plant), at Shag Rock (about half way between Port Waikato and Raglan) where c.15-20 plants survive, the Sugarloafs off the New Plymouth Coastline (20 or so plants) and then from one plant on a rock stack off the southern end of Kapiti Island, and from a few plants (now mostly planted) on the northern side of Mana Island.
Yesterday Department of Conservation (DoC), Waikato Conservancy Botanist Dr Andrea Brandon and DoC Maniapoto Area Office Biodiversity range John Keene and that area offices Programme Manager Dave Smith finally accessed a series of rock stacks just offshore of Albatross Point, west of Kawhia Harbour. Using a helicopter they finally were able to reach stacks which had previously been deemed inaccessible because of dangerous currents and the constant threat of sharks, which are common in the area. DoC staff are grateful to New Zealand Steel who kindly shouted the DOC staff the trip with a machine that they were using in the area.
These rock stacks had been identified as early as 1982 as an ideal place to look for the species. In July of this year they were listed by the Coastal Cress Recovery Team as the number one priority for survey for the Waikato.
So Brandon was delighted to find over 80 plants of Cook’s Scurvy grass growing mainly under taupata (Coprosma repens) bushes. This is a very significant find for the region, and indeed for the whole of the North Island, where this species is now seriously at risk of going extinct.
Samples were collected for a nationwide DNA finger printing exercise initiated by Landcare Research and Department of Conservation scientists Dr Tristan Armstrong and Peter de Lange.
Both scientists working together with the coastal cress recovery team, hope to determine through a nation wide survey of surviving scurvy grass populations where the key sites are to help maintain and enhance genetic diversity in this intriguing member of the cress family.
Posted: 16/09/2006