Brief History
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LICHENOLOGICAL EXPLORATION IN NEW ZEALAND
Lichens were first collected from New Zealand in the 18th century. Nine species in six genera were collected from coastal localities by Banks and Solander on Cook's Endeavour expedition (1768-1771), and George Forster and William Anderson also collected New Zealand lichens on Cook's two subsequent expeditions. The first Southern Hemisphere lichen to be described and illustrated was collected in New Zealand by Forster during the Resolution voyage (1772-1775) and was a dramatic, fern-like plant quite unlike anything then known from Europe. Olof Swartz (1781*) named it Lichen filix [Sticta filix (Sw.) Nyl.]; the original collection is in the Carl Peter Thunberg herbarium in Uppsala, with duplicates in London and Stockholm. The largest collection of New Zealand lichens from the 18th century is that of Archibald Menzies, naturalist on Vancouver's Discovery expedition (1791-1795), who collected 16 species in 7 genera from Dusky Sound in 1791 (his collections are in BM, E and LINN-SM).
In the first three decades of the 19th century J.S.C. Dumont D'Urville was instrumental in collecting a number of new lichens from New Zealand. As second-in-command on the Coquille expedition (1822-1825, commanded by L.I. Duperrey) and in company with the botanist R.P. Lesson, he collected specimens of Sticta carpoloma from the Bay of Islands in April 1824, which were described by Delise the following year (Delise 1825). D'Urville's second Pacific expedition (1826-1829) in the Astrolabe (the renamed Coquille) produced many important botanical discoveries from New Zealand, and Richard's account of the New Zealand lichens (27 taxa with 5 new species) was accompanied by handsome coloured plates in the Atlas (Richard 1832, 1833). D'Urville's third expedition (1837-1840) with the Astrolabe and Zélée, made four landfalls in New Zealand (the Auckland Islands, Hooper's Inlet, Otago Peninsula, Akaroa, and the Bay of Islands) and lichens were collected by D'Urville, and the surgeons Hombron, Jacquinot and Le Guillou. Their collections are preserved in Paris (PC) complete with elegantly printed labels giving details of habitat, locality, date and collector. The lichens of the voyage were published by Montagne (1845).
Lichenology in New Zealand received considerable impetus from the visit of Joseph Hooker to the Bay of Islands in 1841, during the visit there of the Antarctic expedition ships Erebus and Terror, commanded by Captain James Clark Ross. Hooker was assistant surgeon on H.M.S. Erebus, and David Lyall, assistant surgeon on H.M.S. Terror, both were aged 22 with Hooker recently graduated M.D., from the University of Glasgow. Hooker and Lyall, in company with William Colenso and Andrew Sinclair (later Colonial Secretary), collected many lichens from the Bay of Islands, and Hooker also made splendid collections from the Auckland Islands and from Campbell Island. On his return to England in 1843, Hooker enlisted the help of the Irish cryptogamist Thomas Taylor in preparing the lichenological results of the Antarctic voyage for publication. Together they published a preliminary account of Antarctic lichens which included many taxa from New Zealand (Hooker and Taylor 1844), followed by a more detailed treatment of Auckland and Campbell I. lichens in which 4 plates of illustrations were published (Taylor and Hooker 1845; Hooker 1847: pp. 546-547). After his return to England, Hooker encouraged several local botanists to collect lichens and send them to Kew for identification. In addition to the New Zealand lichens already at Kew (those of Banks and Solander, Anderson, Forster, Menzies, Allan and Richard Cunningham, Bidwill, W. Stephenson, Samuel Mossman, Everard Home and Richard Taylor) collections from Colenso, Haast, Hector, Knight, Lyall, Monro, Sinclair and Travers were examined by Hooker who then sent them on to Cambridge to Churchill Babington, Fellow of St John's College and lecturer in Theology in the University, for identification, Thomas Taylor having died in 1847. Babington corresponded widely with all the lichenologists of the day, sending out small specimens from his herbarium with his comments appended to them, to T.M. Fries in Uppsala, Abramo Massalongo in Verona, Camille Montagne and Philip Barker Webb in Paris, and to Müller Argoviensis in Geneva. He began work on the lichens of New Zealand early in 1852 and was instructed by Hooker thus "...My formula are of this kind. I send 4 samples.
Hab. Northern Islds. Colenso.
Hab. Northern and Middle Islands, Colenso - Lyall.
Hab. Throughout the Islands, abundant; Colenso &c.
Hab. Middle Island, Dusky Bay, Lyall &c &c &c.
When a plant is pretty common as most Lichens are I merely give the discoverer (usually Banks and Solander). The succession is:
1. Banks and Solander.
2. Forster.
3. Menzies.
4. Cunningham.
5. Colenso-Sinclair.
6. Self and Bidwill.
7. Lyall.
but if you like to leave the habitats I will put them in. No collector's numbers are wanted, except in reference to published specimens, as Schaerer, and short generic and specific characters of all the species would be extremely useful and acceptable ..." (Hooker May 4, 1852. J.D. Hooker Correspondence, Archives - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).
Babington's account of New Zealand lichens appeared in Vol. II of Hooker's Flora Novae Zealandiae in 1855 and discussed 150 taxa in 33 genera, magnificently illustrated with 20 plates drawn by Walter Hood Fitch from Joseph Hooker's pencil drawings made during the expedition. The brilliantly coloured pattern-plates which were used by the copyists for the 1000 coloured sets of the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage, contain many useful comments from both Hooker and Fitch, and are preserved in the Botany Library of the British Museum (Natural History).
The Scottish physician W. Lauder Lindsay visited Otago in 1861, staying for several months with William Martin at his celebrated nursery (Fairfield), south of Dunedin. Lindsay collected a large number of lichens and on his return to Scotland sent them to Paris for identification by William Nylander. Duplicates of his Otago collections are in Nylander's herbarium (now in Helsinki), in the Hookerian collection (BM) and in his own herbarium at Edinburgh. The main systematic accounts of the Otago collections were those of Nylander (1866) and of Lindsay himself (1866, 1867, 1868, 1869).
Joseph Hooker drew on all of these earlier accounts in the preparation of his comprehensive (for that time) treatment of lichens in his Handbook of the New Zealand Flora which appeared in 1867. This neglected work, which is the first true lichen flora of New Zealand, discussed 213 taxa in 44 genera and for the first time consistently appended brief habitat notes and known distributions. Hooker deprecatingly claimed that his account "...pretends to no more than a sketch of New Zealand Lichenology, and I expect that fully as many species remain to be discovered as are now known to exist in the islands... For myself, I frankly confess that I find it impossible to determine even the foliaceous Lichens satisfactorily, except by comparison of specimens; whilst the species of the crustaceous and corticolous genera are so difficult to examine, and impossible to describe in definite language, that I doubt any two independent workers coming to a tolerably close agreement regarding their limits and nomenclature, even if they worked upon the same specimens...".
The first New Zealand botanist to make a serious study of lichens was the Auditor-General, Charles Knight (1808-1891), who was active between 1856 and 1888. He commenced the study of lichens at the age of 48 writing to Joseph Hooker in 1856 "...I have been busy with the lichens. I have completed about 80 drawings of the asci, sporidia etc. I now draw with the aid of the Camera and have no difficulty in using it. I am not quite certain that you are correct in your opinion that hair splitting and species mongering is owing as you state to a deficiency of early education in "Natural History as with all studies taken up late in life". What is meant by late in life I don't exactly know; but if you mean that when the intellect is sharpened by the work of years and when its tendency is to doubt, that it is then least fitted for original and new investigations then I believe you are mistaken. But I see clearly that it takes necessarily a long time to become acquainted with the facts of natural history, and while ignorant of them, you cannot generalise, and are likely to attach undue value to minute differences but those are the fault of the young; not of the tried and practiced intellect that knows where and how to find errors. Even those who have given the better part of their lives to a particular pursuit have a strong love for species making...". Knight, although not a wide collector, was the first student of the group in New Zealand to make a careful study of anatomical characters, and the beautiful watercolour drawings accompanying specimens in his own herbarium (WELT) and in London (BM) attest to his skill in section-making, and care in microscopic observation. In the course of an extremely busy public life he managed to fit lichenology into his spare time before breakfast! He sent many specimens to overseas lichenologists, published several papers on New Zealand lichens, maintained a vigorous correspondence with overseas botanists (he it was in fact who organised the New Zealand Government commission for Joseph Hooker to write the Handbook) and also subscribed to the major lichen exsiccatae of the day. In April 1881 he wrote to Hooker "... I have retired from Government Service on my pension of £600 a year. My work is now in the use of the lathe and in the study of Lichens. I am afraid you will add that I shall furnish another instance of the failure of those who commence cryptogamic Botany late in life, as you warned me many years since. I have done little hitherto and that badly; but I now see that with some facility in the use of the Pencil, and an aptitude for microscopic work that I may do useful work in the future. It is doubtful, as Dr Lionel Beale says "whether an honest inquirer skilled in observation can be of greater use in his time than by making good drawings of what he has seen; we may reasonably hope that those who follow us will look at our drawings if we are careful to make honest copies of nature; but we can hardly expect that much that is now written will be read some years hence when the whole aspect of the department of Science we love to develop shall be completely changed" ...".
Knight's lichens are widely represented in most major European herbaria, and his own herbarium (including many exsiccatae in fine condition) is in the National Museum of New Zealand in Wellington (WELT).
In 1888 William Nylander in Paris revised New Zealand lichen collections available to him in Europe and his Lichenes Novae Zelandiae records 371 taxa in 61 genera. In 1894 Müller Argoviensis in Geneva recorded 730 taxa in 115 genera, and in 1896 Hellbom published an account of New Zealand lichens collected by Sven Berggren in 1874-75. Besides these major European works dealing with New Zealand lichens, several papers describing new species from New Zealand were written by the Scotsman James Stirton between 1873 and 1900 based on the collections of John Buchanan from Dunedin and Wellington, and T.W.N. Beckett from Christchurch.
Although the lichens of many inland and alpine localities were not known in the 19th century, at its close there was a substantial body of work in print dealing with New Zealand lichens, but type, and original collections were widely scattered in British and European herbaria with very little taxonomically useful material remaining in New Zealand. The major exceptions to this were the private herbaria of Knight in Wellington, Beckett in Christchurch (now in CHR) and Buchanan whose lichens were given to the Otago Museum after his death and which are now in WELT. That New Zealand's lichen flora was extremely rich there was no doubt, but in the 19th century few had really seen it at first hand and European taxonomists were seldom aware of even the most rudimentary ecological preferences of the species they described and were entirely ignorant of the variation of New Zealand species or of their distributions.
Modern lichenology in New Zealand, when some of these latter considerations were to be grappled with, dates from the arrival of the Swedish botanists G. Einar and Greta Du Rietz late in 1926. During a stay of six months they collected in excess of 4000 numbers and were the first botanists (both had an interest in and published on lichens) to collect lichens intensively from all parts of the New Zealand botanical province from the Bay of Islands to the Antipodes and Auckland Islands. They made a comprehensive overview of the lichen flora in a way that has never been, and may never be repeated in quite such a condensed space of time. Although a detailed account of their work in New Zealand (Einar Du Rietz collected also in eastern Australia and Java during the course of the expedition) was never published, their enthusiasm and example made local botanists, especially H.H. Allan and J. Scott Thomson, examine the lichen flora much more thoroughly. Encouraged by Du Rietz, H.H. Allan began a correspondence and exchange of specimens with the leading lichen systematists of the day, primarily Zahlbruckner in Vienna, but also Sandstede in Berlin, Bouly de Lesdain, Hillmann and Gyelnik, resulting, in 1941, in the posthumous publication of Zahlbruckner's Lichenes Novae Zealandiae , in which 605 taxa in 85 genera are recorded, including 139 new taxa. For the first time many North I. collections (primarily from coastal localities) were discussed, mainly from the collections of H.H. Allan, L.B. Moore and L.M. Cranwell. J.S. Thomson's collections are from both alpine and coastal localities in South I. Specimens discussed by Zahlbruckner are to be found in CHR, OTA and W.
Although several more or less comprehensive taxonomic works on New Zealand lichens were now extant, they were not at all widely available in New Zealand and were rarely consulted by local botanists with the result that until the 1950s, lichenology in this country still remained a closed book. H.H. Allan [see Galloway N.Z.J. Bot. 14: 225-30 (1976)] wrote a series of introductory keys to various groups between 1948 and 1950, but his interest in lichens never extended to a comprehensive account and it was left to William Martin and James Murray in Dunedin to reinstate lichens in New Zealand as objects of serious botanical study. Both Martin and Murray came to lichens at the same time but through entirely different avenues. Murray, an organic chemist at the University of Otago, was involved in natural-product chemistry of the native vegetation and between 1949 and 1951 used the yellow-medulla species of Pseudocyphellaria (P. colensoi and P. coronata) for his doctorate studies in Cambridge. Martin on the other hand was slowly working through all cryptogamic plant groups as a retirement project [Galloway N.Z.J. Bot. 14: 367-374 (1976)]. On Murray's return to New Zealand in 1952, he and Martin decided upon the commendable arrangement of Martin working on Cladonia with Murray undertaking revisions of the other major lichen genera, each making their collections available to the other. Their taxonomic work was hindered by the lack of type specimens available for study in New Zealand, and their published work in some ways relies rather too much on published descriptions of Northern Hemisphere plants. However, Murray was aware of the shortcomings of attempting to do taxonomic work in New Zealand remote from original material, so in 1960 he visited most of the important European herbaria while he was based in London at Imperial College and the BM. His searching of the types relating to New Zealand's lichen vegetation was exceptionally thorough as a perusal of his notebooks shows, and he returned to New Zealand early in 1961 eager to reorganise his herbarium. He set about a systematic revision of genera, the families Parmeliaceae, Pannariaceae and Stictaceae being special targets. While in London he had worked closely on Psoroma (and other genera in the Pannariaceae), Sticta, Pseudocyphellaria and Menegazzia, mainly in collaboration with Peter James (BM), and he was also instrumental in awakening Aino Henssen's interest in the macrolichen genera of the Pannariaceae. Twenty-two years after his death some of his herbarium names are finally being validated.
I worked with Murray for about four months at the beginning of 1961 after his return from London, and brought back lichens from climbing trips for his comments. We began a revision of Ramalina in New Zealand but it proceeded no further than a preliminary examination of species in the Dunedin area and the preparation of a tentative working key before his tragic death in a motorcar accident in 1961. Murray's lichens were curated in 1962-63 by Peter James whose influence on New Zealand lichenology has been considerable, both in terms of encouraging continuing study by local botanists and through his own discoveries in New Zealand. His important work on cephalodia developed out of observations and collections made in New Zealand at this time. William Martin continued collecting and publishing almost until his death at the age of 88 in 1975. His extensive collections which are now housed in the herbarium at Lincoln (CHR) are the true measure of his worth as a lichenologist, but his popular book with John Child on New Zealand lichens published in 1972 opened the subject to a much wider local audience, besides setting international standards for lichen photography in colour, then still rarely used in local floras. In this work Martin discusses about 300 species from 47 genera, but taxa are not described in detail and many genera are not provided with keys.
It was obvious that the major impediment to the advance of lichenology in New Zealand was the lack of a modern flora, dealing with all genera (as far as possible) with keys to species and with adequate species descriptions encompassing something of the variation encountered in the field, with notes on known distributions, phytogeographical affinities and ecology. In recent years the main impetus in taxonomic work on New Zealand lichens has been directed towards macrolichen genera, however the crustose genera provide the main challenge for the future and already several European workers are realising the riches available in New Zealand. Leif Tibell (UPS) collected genera in the Caliciales in depth during a ten-month stay in 1980-81, and Harrie Sipman (U) and Helmut Mayrhofer (GZU) have discovered several new taxa in Megalospora sens. lat. and Rinodina respectively.
My own interest in lichens dates from 1956 when I was at school in Invercargill and began collecting Cladia and Cladonia under the supervision of Mr G.C. Martin, the son of William Martin and Senior Chemistry Master at Southland Boys' High School. Later, at Otago University through contacts with Dr James Murray and Mr Peter James I extended the scope of my lichen collecting. An interest in mountaineering led to serious collecting in the Otago Alps and to a study of the lichens of the Central Otago mountains with Prof. A.F. Mark. Several trips were made to Stewart Island (1964-1969), and to Dusky Sound, Fiordland (1969) using the facilities of Otago University's R.V. Munida. Lichen excursions were also made with the following visitors: Mr P.W. James (BM - 1962); Prof. M. Sato (Ibaraki University, Japan - 1964); Prof. G. Degelius (Göteborg, Sweden - 1970); Prof. F. Mattick (Berlin - 1971) and Dr G.C. Bratt (Tasmania - 1972). More recently field work in New Zealand has included: Three Kings Is, King Country and Rotorua areas of North I, and in South I, Nelson Lakes National Park, Denniston Plateau, the Lewis Pass area, and the foothill ranges of South and mid Canterbury. Current research interests includes the genera: Pseudocyphellaria, Sticta, Psoroma, Leioderma, Pannaria, Parmeliella, Phlyctella and Siphula, and the relationships of the New Zealand lichen flora with other southern temperate lichen floras.
The astonishing diversity of habitats that exist between western and eastern coasts, and between the northern and the southern extremities of New Zealand will ensure many lichenological discoveries for generations to come. However, this remarkable richness and diversity of New Zealand's lichens is an easily destroyed phenomenon and already atmospheric and terrestrial pollution, hydro-electric power development, changes in land use and especially in management practices in native forests have placed, (and will continue to do so) many lichen communities at risk. While it is hoped that the present Lichen Flora will be instrumental in opening up New Zealand's unique lichen flora for further study, the great importance of responsible collecting in a country which at first sight appears to possess an over-abundance of living material, cannot be too carefully stressed.
Although data is now available on the approximate size, composition and affinities of the New Zealand lichen flora, little is currently known about lichen ecology, sociology, distribution and speciation and the factors influencing these in a New Zealand setting - all exciting studies for the future.
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*For details of references cited here seeAnnals of Taxonomic Research, pp. xxviii-xxxviii.
