New Guinea Botanist position at Kew

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew is one of the most venerable and respected institutions for botanical research worldwide, and now they're wanting someone to work on the flora of New Guinea. Once completed, this project will be a valuable addition to our knowledge of one of the world's richest rainforest habitats. However, it will be interesting to see how they work in with current projects providing information on the trees of Papua New Guinea.

Pressing plants

Weevils feed on plants, with many species being very picky about the plants they eat. These host interactions are very important for understanding the ecology of both the weevils and the plants. When collecting therefore, it is important that the plants from which weevils have been collected are identified and noted. Therefore, as a weevil guy, it is important that I have a fair understanding of plant identification.

A key aspect of the process is knowing the proper way to collect, preserve and label plant specimens. Searching the internet has revealed good guides on the University of Florida Herbarium webpage and a PDF produced by the Herb Society of America.

It's not too arduous—pressing plant material can be done by placing the material under a few big books. Much more important is knowing what to put on the label. Plant specimens tend to be mounted on large (A3) sheets of paper, giving a lot of space to write pertinent information. Therefore, major additional categories from that on insect labels include its frequency (is it rare, common, or something in between?), and details of the plant's height, growth habit and description of aspects of the plant that disappear when pressed (e.g. colour of flowers, smell and sap). There's also the space and ability to provide exact locality data and more detailed habitat information than is possible with insect labels.

Papua New Guinea plants

There is fairly little readily available information for the native flora of the South Pacific. Thankfully, this has started to change with the advent of the PNGPlants Project. This excellent website brings together descriptions, factsheets and photos of herbarium specimens (such as the specimen of Nothofagus pullei above) to provide a very accessible introduction to the plants of one of the most biodiverse regions in the world.

Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk (PIER)

The Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk (PIER) website is an excellent resource to the weeds of importance throughout the tropical Pacific region. The main strength of the site is the extensive list of species fact sheets (including Sphagneticola trilobata, an important lowland weed in Western Viti Levu, Fiji; pictured above) It also includes assessments of the weed fauna of several Pacific Islands, primarily within Micronesia and Polynesia.

While on the subject, SPREP has published some guidelines for the management of invasive species in the Pacific, an important document for those dealing with such things in the region.

Pacific Island Agroforestry documents

The Secretariat for the Pacific Community (SPC) teamed up with a number of North American organisations to produce a series of pamphlets to promote agroforestry in the Pacific. These pamphlets take the form of species accounts and are an excellent source on information to the propagation, cultivation, uses and enemies of a number of different plant species. While the hard copy editions went out of print a while ago, PDFs are freely available online.

The species accounts include details on how to propagate species in the the mangrove genera Bruguiera and Rhizophora. With the fear of the effects of climate change on the vulnerable islands of the South Pacific, I believe that these plants should become much more widely planted to protect against shoreline erosion and seawater inundation. The accounts do make the very important recommendation to not plant these species outside of their natural range, as they can be invasive. They are however found naturally throughout the Pacific, so that should not be a problem for the most part. The plants are very easily propagated and propagules can be sourced from local trees. There may be some downsides in terms of coastal access; and they may not grow so readily on the weather coasts of atolls. However, I do think that more research and promotion of the propagation of these trees is one of the most pro-active ways that the Pacific Islands can fight the effects of climate change.

Polynesian plant names

I have recently come across a mighty tome. The Dictionary of Polynesian Plant Names by Karl Rensch and Arthur Whistler weighs in at over 700 pages in length and contains a mighty amount of information on what species of plant are called what names on what island or island group in the Pacific.

While essentially it is just a list of names, it also contains some fascinating tidbits of information regarding cultural use of the plants. For example we find that Cordia subcordata, known as tauanave in Samoa is a highly-valued timber tree used for canoes and household implements.
We also discover that mafa'i in Tongan refers to the cucurbit Luffa cylindrica var. insularum, a creeper whose fruit makes a good sponge. The relative value of each of the plants is also shown by the number of names given to each plant, with Finderlist 2 show

This book is obviously a book that is the result of much scholarship and research by the authors. No doubt it is also a labour of love, with both authors having much experience in the South Pacific. A reference work of great value for biologists, linguists and anybody interested in the interaction of people and their environment in Polynesia. Unfortunately, it appears to be privately published, and thus is hard to obtain. If anyone knows where to get it from, let the rest of us know...

Reference:
Rensch KH, Whistler AW. 2008. Dictionary of Polynesian Plant Names. Archipelago Press, Canberra. 723 pp