Source: Radio New Zealand
New Zealand’s flowers are often described as “small and green and insignificant”, but an award-winning botanist and author says they have complex stories.
Professor of botany Philip Garnock-Jones captured 100 of 2200 native flowers of NZ in his book He Puāwai, A Natural History of New Zealand Flowers.
The photos in the book appear in three-dimensional form, and readers are equipped with a wee lens to take a closer look.
The book, which was awarded best first book at Wednesday night’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, aims to give readers more information about flowers.
“The photographs are stereo pairs so you have a little viewer to look at them that’s tucked in the back of the book,” Garnock-Jones told RNZ’s Afternoons.
“And so, there are two seemingly identical photos side by side but they’re actually slightly different, one for each eye and when you get the viewer to work and most people do after a bit of practice, the flower pops out at you.”
The idea was to give readers an insight in to how a botanist looks at flowers, he says.
“.. from the angle a botanist would look at them to show their parts and their functions, and the stereo is part of that too.”
Aotearoa’s flowers are more complicated and intricate than their appearance may let on, he says.
“I’ve tried to tell in the book how they’re pollinated, how they present their male and female parts at different times and different strategies, things going on. It’s not at all simple.”
The book also shows New Zealand’s more spectacular bird-pollinated flowers.
“Particularly the reds and yellows, kōwhai, pōhutukawa, harakeke, and it’s the attracting of birds with their four-colour vision that those flowers are coloured for.”
The book isn’t just for botanists, he says.
“Gardeners, anyone with an interest in New Zealand natural history I think. Botanical societies are strong all around the country and some of them have helped with funding.
“I’m surprised at how many people that don’t have a botanical background are interested in it.”
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand