Abstract
An album entitled ‘New Zealand Mosses’ was purchased by Auckland Museum from a London antiquarian bookseller in 2014. The album comprises 120 pages each with a mounted plant specimen. Of the specimens, 117 are bryophytes, comprising 81 mosses, 35 liverworts and one hornwort. In addition, there are two seaweeds, one flowering plant, and one blank page. Almost all specimens are here identified to species level, and the remainder to genus level. The bryophytes are all common lowland species in New Zealand today. Locality of collection is given on all but two pages; they are principally from the northern North Island, but include a single South Island locality, Pelorus. All localities would be accessible from the coast. From the publication dates of the plant names used, production of the album is likely to have occurred between 1854 and 1867. A review of early bryological exploration in New Zealand is provided, as well as a discussion of moss collectors active in the mid-19th C. We speculate that the specimens in the album may have been collected by a traveller on H.M.S. Pandora during its part in the 1848–1856 Great Survey of New Zealand, perhaps by the ship’s surgeon, Dr John Jolliffe, or someone else travelling on board.
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Citation
Beever, Jessica E., & Braggins, John E. (2022). An historic album of New Zealand bryophyte specimens. https://doi.org/10.32912/ram.2022.56.2