The southern conifer Agathis australis is among the largest (by volume) and longest-lived trees in the world. They are confined to the north of New Zealand's north island where droughts will become more frequent and severe under future climatic conditions. To explore the impact of drought on water...

Aims: Changing climate and land use patterns make it increasingly important that the hydrology of catchments and ecosystems can be reliably characterized. The aim of this paper is to identify the biophysical factors that determine the rates of water vapor loss from different types of vegetation,...

Past studies of Sophora sect. Edwardsia using traditional phylogenetic and population genetic markers have been unable to produce a resolved species phylogeny of this recent radiation of shrubs and trees. Here we examined the relationships within and between the New Zealand species of Sophora sect. ...

A molecular phylogeny to test the monophyly of Nephelolejeunea by using previously published nrITS, rbcL and trnL-F sequence data demonstrated that Nephelolejeunea is paraphyletic with respect to Siphonolejeunea. Nephelolejeunea and Siphonolejeunea are, therefore, merged and, as the latter name has ...

The 4500-year kauri (Agathis australis) chronology includes ring width data from subfossil remains, 19th-century building timbers and live kauri trees. It was assumed that the building timber data set represented a similar geographic spread to modern kauri sites but that assumption has not been...

Among conifer families, Podocarpaceae is the second largest, with amazing diversity and functional traits, and it is the dominant Southern Hemisphere conifer family. However, comprehensive studies on diversity, distribution, systematic and ecophysiological aspects of the Podocarpaceae are sparse....

A leaf-spotting fungal pathogen common on Metrosideros excelsa in New Zealand is described here as Blastacervulus metrosideri sp. nov. It has previously been identified in the New Zealand literature as Leptomelanconium sp. and as Staninwardia breviuscula. The choice of genus for this new species is ...

Cyttaria is a morphologically and biologically distinct genus comprising wood-inhabiting species that are biotrophic associates of trees in the genera Nothofagus sensu stricto and Lophozonia in southern South America, Australia, and New Zealand. The uniqueness of the fruit bodies and habitat of ...

Favolaschia calocera was originally described from Madagascar, and reported to have a worldwide distribution. In the current study, samples of the Favolaschia calocera from Central America, Australia, China, Kenya, Italy, New Zealand, and Thailand were analyzed by using both morphological and...

The selection of drought-tolerant genotypes is globally recognized as an effective strategy to maintain the growth and survival of commercial tree species exposed to future drought periods. New genomic selection tools that reduce the time of progeny trials are required to substitute traditional...