Botanical naming

Date posted: 18-Oct-2018

Would you like to volunteer with the Island's hihi team and learn from them how ..

Date posted: 05-Sep-2018

The new 2019 calendars are now available and this year's is better than ever! Th..

Winners of kokako photo competition

Date posted: 02-Sep-2018

The stunning winning photographs from those submitted to the competition as part..

Date posted: 21-Jul-2018

(https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-great-kokako-story-celebrating-21-years-..

Kokako Photographic Competition

Date posted: 20-Jul-2018

KŌKAKO PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION Celebrating 21 years on Tiritiri Matangi To ce..

New monitoring reports published

Date posted: 19-Jul-2018

Reports on monitoring studies carried out over the past year have now been poste..

Date posted: 15-Feb-2018

Our 2018 concert will feature an afternoon of light classics and jazz courtesy of the Auckland Ph..

Date posted: 05-Feb-2018

For the Social on 19 March the speaker will be Ben Goodwin of Auckland Zoo, who will talk about t..

Rat caught and now takahe released from pens

Date posted: 28-Jan-2018

Thankfully DOC staff Andre de Graaf and Polly Hall and their assistants have trapped the rat whic..

Your Christmas Shopping for a Song

Date posted: 04-Dec-2017

Aka - The Grand Christmas Shopping Expedition to Tiritiri Matangi Island Shop Dreading..

Botanical plant names follow an International code that groups botanically similar plants in a systematic way based on the structure of their flowers. The system allows for four levels of naming; Family, Genus, Species, Cultivar.

The last three levels are used in situations such as plant labels.

A user friendly useful way of relating to botanical naming is to think of the Genus as a surname and the species name as the Christian name.

For example in the name Metrosideros excelsa (Pohutakawa)

Metrosideros is the Genus (surname) and excelsa is the species (christian name)

Metrosideros excelsa is Pohutakawa or New Zealand Christmas Tree

Metrosideros umbellata is South Island rata

Metrosideros robusta is Northern rata

All scientific names for fauna and flora are either displayed in italics or underlined. The genus is capitalised and the rest of the scientific name is in lower case.

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