New Zealand Journal of Botany abstracts

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Short communication

First record of a vascular plant from the Bounty Islands: Lepidium oleraceum (nau, Cook’s scurvy grass) (Brassicaceae)

Jacinda Amey

Department of Zoology
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

Janice M. Lord

Department of Botany
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

Peter de Lange

Terrestrial Conservation Unit
Department of Conservation
Private Bag 68908
Newton
Auckland 1145, New Zealand

Abstract   The discovery of a population of the New Zealand endemic Lepidium oleraceum (nau, Cook’s scurvy grass; Brassicaceae) on Funnel Island, in the Centre Group of the Bounty Islands archipelago is reported. A single plant was also sighted growing on the top of Molly Cap. This represents the first record of a vascular plant species on the inhospitable Bounty Islands archipelago. The location of the plants in sheltered, north-facing crevices may explain why they were overlooked by previous visits. However, given this population’s morphological and genetic affinities to southern South Island and Stewart Island populations of L. oleraceum sens. str. rather than to forms of that species known from the nearby Antipodes Islands archipelago, it is more likely that this is a recent colonisation from that part of New Zealand.

Keywords   Brassicaceae; Lepidium oleraceum; Bounty Islands; long-distance dispersal; DNA sequences; New Zealand flora

B05041; Online publication date 27 February 2007; Received 15 September 2005; accepted 19 December 2006

New Zealand Journal of Botany, 2007, Vol. 45: 87–90
0028–825X/07/4501–0087  © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2007

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