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

Joseph Dalton Hooker

Joseph Dalton Hooker

Several biographers have emphasised that William and Joseph Hooker, and their contributions to botany, are related parts of the same subject. Being the son of a renowned botanist and brought up in a botanical environment clearly had a strong influence on Joseph. He apparently inherited, from his father, physical stamina, artistic ability and a great capacity for hard work. Joseph greatly admired his father, as is evident from his eighty-eight-page article "A sketch of the life and labours of Sir William Jackson Hooker" page 72 {Annals of Botany, 1902). William Hooker had a similarly high opinion of his son and spared no effort to have him appointed assistant director of Kew (1855) and to ensure that he would succeed him as director.

Joseph was three years old when the family moved to Glasgow early in 1821 to join William, who had been there for nearly a year. By the time he was thirteen and attending Glasgow High School, he was described as a "zealous botanist". When still a child

I remember on one occasion, chat, after returning home, I built up by a heap of stones a representation of one of the mountains I had ascended, and stuck upon it specimens of the mosses I had collected on it, at heights relative to those at which I had gathered them. This was the dawn of my love for geographical botany.

At the tender age of fifteen, he entered Glasgow University and attended lectures in Latin, Greek, mathematics and philosophy. His spare time was spent in collecting insects and plants in Scotland and parts of England. He had taken part in botanical field trips led by his father long before he was a regular student. Then he embarked on a medical degree.

Plate 19 Anisotome latifolia

This member of the carrot family (Umbelliferae) is restricted to Auckland and Campbell Islands, where it was once common in moist places from sea level to mountain tops. It is now almost restricted to places inaccessible to stock. Joseph Hooker commented, "This is certainly one of the noblest plants of the natural order to which it belongs, often attaining a height of six feet, and bearing several umbels of rose-coloured or purplish flowers, each compound umbel as large as a human head. The foliage is of a deep shining green, and the whole plant emits, when bruised, an aromatic smell." There are some twelve other species of Anisotome in New Zealand.

The illustration shows "A small flowering portion of the plant, with the limb of the leaf". Figure 1, unexpanded male flower; figure 2, the same expanded; figure 3, sepals and the central, sterile ovary region of a male flower. Part of a leaf is shown, uncoloured, in the background.

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Plate 19 Anisotome latifolia Hook. f. Walter Fitch (in J. D. Hooker's Flora Antarctica)

Plate 19 Anisotome latifolia Hook. f. Walter Fitch (in J. D. Hooker's Flora Antarctica)

Plate 20 Drosera stenopetala (sundew)

This species, like all I have chosen to illustrate from The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage, was irst described by Joseph Hooker. This illustration is from Flora Novae-Zelandiae. The sundews are insectivorous plants — often growing in nitrogen deficient soils — which supplement their diet by obtaining nitrogenous compounds from insects. These are trapped on the leaves, which have sticky surfaces and long sticky hairs. Drosera stenopetala is a widely distributed species that occurs in the North Island south of latitude 40°, South Island, Stewart Island, Auckland and Campbell Islands. In the northern part of its range it is found in montane to subalpine bogs, but in the south it descends to sea level. There are six New Zealand species of Drosera (family Droseraceae), a cosmopolitan genus with about 100 species world wide. The specimen Joseph Hooker based his description on was collected by David Lyall from Preservation Inlet, at the south of the South Island.

Figure 1, flower; figure 2, petal (considerably enlarged); figure 3, stamen; figure 4, central ovary and surrounding stamens.

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Plate 20 Drosera stenopetala Hook. f. (sundew) Walter Fitch (in J. D. Hooker's Flora Novae-Zelandiae)

Plate 20 Drosera stenopetala Hook. f. (sundew) Walter Fitch (in J. D. Hooker's Flora Novae-Zelandiae)

The lectures his father gave in botany were part of the medical course, and, with a few exceptions, William Hooker's students were taking a medical degree. It does not seem as if Joseph Hooker studied medicine with the intention of becoming a doctor. It has been recorded that he only occasionally attended the dissecting room. The qualification would, however, enable him to take part, as ship's surgeon, in expeditions to various parts of the world, where he could extend his botanical interests. No sooner had he graduated in 1839, aged twenty-one, than he was able, largely through his father's efforts, to join the British Navy so that he could be employed on Captain James Clark Ross's forthcoming Antarctic Expedition.

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Plate 21 Exocarpus bidwillii

This curious, many-branched shrub looks much like a conifer when in fruit (figure 4), for the leaves are reduced to scales and the fruit has a superficial resemblance to that of, say, totara (Podocarpus Mara), with a fleshy, red aril below what looks like a black seed. What appears to be a seed in Exocarpus is, in fact, a fruit and when flowers are present (figure 3) it is obvious that the plant is not a conifer. Another curious feature of Exocarpus, which is shared by many other members of the sandalwood family (Santalaceae), is that it is a root parasite. Long roots of the plant attach themselves to the woody roots of one or more hosts and these penetrate them and absorb nourishment from the sap of the host. Host plants include mountain beech (Nothofagtis solandri var. cliffortioides), manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) and species of Dracophyllum, Hebe and a conifer, snow totara {Podocarpus nivalis). Exocarpus bidwillii is the sole New Zealand species and is confined to montane and alpine regions in the South Island mountains. The specimen that formed the basis for Joseph Hooker's description was collected by John Bidwill (1815-53) from the Wairau mountains, near Nelson. Walter Fitch did the painting and lithograph. There are twenty-five other species of Exocarpus distributed in Australia, Malaysia, Indo-China and the Pacific islands to Hawaii.

Figure 1, branch and two inflorescences of unopened flowers; figure 2, opening flower bud; figure 3, flower; figure 4, branch with a fruit (the red fleshy aril below the black fruit is morphologically the top of the flower stalk); figure 5, bisected fruit and aril; Figure 6, embryo, removed from the top of the seed. (From Flora Novae-Zelandiae)

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Plate 21 Exocarpus bidwillli Hook f. Walter Fitch (in J. D. Hooker's Flora Novae-Zelandiae)

Plate 21 Exocarpus bidwillli Hook f. Walter Fitch (in J. D. Hooker's Flora Novae-Zelandiae)

Plate 22 Knightia excelsa (rewarewa or New Zealand honeysuckle)

The painting shows nearly mature flower buds. Each flower has four, fused, petaloid, perianth segments, free only at their tips. At flowering they split apart and each becomes curled up near the base of the flower. Inside are four pollen-bearing stamens and a central carpel, which becomes the fruit. The buds are clothed with reddish-brown hairs, giving a velvety appearance, difficult to illustrate but nicely shown in this painting. Rewarewa is found in lowland and lower montane forests up to 1,000 metres in altitude throughout much of the North Island. It reaches as far south as the Marlborough Sounds in the South Island. The trees are tall, slender, spire-like and reach up to thirty metres high. Young plants have juvenile leaves longer and narrower than those found on adult plants. Rewarewa and toru (Toronia toru) are the only New Zealand members of the protea family (Proteaceae), which is abundant in Australia and South Africa.

Courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand

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Plate 22 Knightia excelsa R. Br. (New Zealand honeysuckle or rewarewa) Martha King

Plate 22 Knightia excelsa R. Br. (New Zealand honeysuckle or rewarewa) Martha King