Abstract
A Flora of the Liverworts and Hornworts of New Zealand is an illustrated guide to an important component of New Zealand’s green plant flora. The liverworts and hornworts, together with the mosses, make up the bryophytes. Liverworts are morphologically a more diverse group than the mosses in that they have both leafy and thallose forms, the leafy forms at times being mistaken for mosses. Volume 1 deals solely with leafy liverworts, as will Volume 2; Volume 3 will deal with the remainder of the leafy liverworts together with the thallose liverworts and the hornworts.
There are 595 species of liverworts and 13 hornwort species in 49 families and 157 genera that are currently accepted as occurring in the New Zealand region, defined here to include Kermadec, North, South, Stewart, and Chatham islands, as well as New Zealand’s subantarctic islands—Auckland, Campbell, and Antipodes islands. This volume provides keys and descriptions to 211 of the 595 liverwort species, and provides a key to all genera of the largest order, the Jungermanniales. Detailed notes are provided on distribution and habitat, and discussions under the family and genus descriptions place the New Zealand flora in the context of the world liverwort and hornwort flora. To complement the descriptions, 172 black-and-white plates illustrate details of many of the species and 101 color images illustrate almost all of the 60 genera in this volume.
Volume 1 also includes a detailed Introduction, which presents a history of exploration of the New Zealand flora; provides a detailed overview of the region’s climate, geology, and vegetation; and includes a special contribution on endophytic fungi associates in New Zealand liverworts and their ecological and evolutionary significance.
When this three-volume flora is completed, it will be the first flora for these two groups of bryophytes since Hooker’s 1864 –1867 Handbook of the New Zealand Flora.
