Welcome to the Department of Botany
Botany covers all aspects of the life of plants. It includes their structure and development, physiology and biochemistry, health and disease, relationships with other organisms and the environment (ecology), as well as traditional aspects of plant identification and classification. Our research uses these approaches to investigate New Zealand species from marine, through grasslands and forests, to alpine ecosystems. It covers all groups of ‘plants’: flowering plants, gymnosperms, ferns, mosses, algae, fungi, cyanobacteria, even viruses. Our undergraduate courses covers this range too, as do the postgraduate and honours student research projects.
News and Events
Visit the Seminars page for more information on departmental talks in 2011
Green Roof
Master's student Susan Harvey has produced a news item on the green roof based on the Psychology department's William James Building at the University of Otago.
Interviews with Dr Janice Lord and Mark Mason, Property Services energy consultant.
6th Annual BSO Photography competition
Contratulations to the two winners of the 2012 Botanical Society of Otago photography comptetion.
Left to right; Suli Teasdale, winner of the Interactions section, and Lorna Little, winner of Plants in the Landscape section and overall winner.
Departmental Seminars
All following seminars will be held in the Union Street Lecture Theatre, Cnr Union St West & Great King St (PDF), at 12 noon.
Wednesday 9 May
Keeping it hot when it's cold outside: plant sex in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic
Lorna Little, PhD candidate, Department of Botany, University of Otago
Wednesday 16 May 2012 12 noon
Floral biology and genetic variation in Euphrasia dyeri.
Vicky McGimpsey, MSc candidate.
Are reproductive characteristics of Wahlenbergia albomarginata dependent on environment?
Olivia Sawrey, MSc candidate.
Wednesday 23 May 2012 12 noon
Beyond New Zealand: Global Biodiversity of Myxomycetes
Prof. Steven Stephenson, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
7th Southern Connection Congress 2013
Southern lands and oceans: Life on the edge?
21 - 25 January 2013
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
The Southern Connection Congress links scientists interested in the natural sciences in the Southern Hemisphere. To date topics have included biogeography, ecology, conservation, ecophysiology, invasions, ethnography, phylogenetics, phylogeography and Earth and ocean processes.
Visit the 7th Southern Connection website
Green News - the newsletter produced by undergraduate students for undergraduate students