Botanist Newsletter

Issue No. 17, April to May 1998

Monitoring of Ecological Heritage Sites

A site visit was made to EHS 29.03 (Barnett Valley, top) as part of the monitoring required for the City Plan.

Natural Areas on Port Hills

A presentation was made to one of the City Plan hearings, regarding several sites in Hoon Hay valley that are listed as Recommended Areas for Protection (RAP’s) by Meurk et al. (1993).

New plant record in NZ

A plant that is growing in salt marsh along the Heathcote River was sent out to Landcare for identification. It turns out that it is a new record for New Zealand and some material will be sent to Kew for full identification. Landcare have identified it so far as Limonium sp., which is the same genus as statice.

Since it is aggressively invading an area of salt marsh, its likely fate is eradication.

Wetlands in Christchurch

Details of wetland sites within Christchurch, along with a map of their locations, was provided to the CRC.

Bexley Wetland

A resource consent is being sought to excavate a moat between Pacific Park subdivision and Bexley Wetland which is immediately adjacent to it. Considerable care has been taken to avoid unnecessary damage to the wetland (salt marsh) which is a remnant of high quality native vegetation.

Britten Reserve

Photographs of Britten Reserve over the last few years have been labeled and filed, so as to provide the beginning of a long term record of the state of the vegetation (especially the silver tussocks) in the reserve. There has been ongoing conflict regarding the appropriate level of grazing for the reserve and this sort of record will assist in determining the appropriate management of the site.

Weed Booklet

A booklet on weed species is being compiled for Water Services, that will assist Works Operations in identifying plants along the river banks. This will enable them to determine which plants should be removed. A list of species to include has been drawn up and work on assembling the information has begun.

Bird Booklet

Water Services are also planning a pamphlet, similar to the Streamside Planting Guide, that provides information on which plant species are the most beneficial for encouraging certain bird species, by providing food, shelter etc.

Wetland at Brooklands

A site visit was made to get an overview of the wetlands recently found by Dr Colin Meurk and Andrew Crossland at Brooklands. This is a large area of salt marsh which is in a strip between Brooklands Lagoon and Brooklands township.

Plant Identification

Several requests for plant identification were met. These included identifying some weed species growing along the Avon River and identifying some native plants species growing along one of the tracks in Victoria Park.