Brassicaceae or Cruciferae is a medium-sized and economically important family of flowering plants commonly known as the mustards, the crucifers, or the cabbage family. Most are herbaceous plants, while some are shrubs. The leaves are simple, lack stipules, and appear alternately on stems or in rosettes. The inflorescences are terminal and lack bracts. The flowers have four free sepals, four free alternating petals, two shorter free stamens and four longer free stamens. The fruit has seeds in rows, divided by a thin wall.
Cochlearia is a genus of about 30 species of annual and perennial herbs in the family Brassicaceae. They are widely distributed in temperate and arctic areas of the northern hemisphere, most commonly found in coastal regions, on cliff-tops and salt marshes where their high tolerance of salt enables them to avoid competition from larger, but less salt-tolerant plants; they also occur in alpine habitats in mountains and tundra.
Sophora is a genus of about 45 species of small trees and shrubs in the pea family Fabaceae. The species have a pantropical distribution. The generic name is derived from sophera, an Arabic name for a pea-flowered tree.
Tasman Bay, originally known in English as Blind Bay, is a large V-shaped bay at the north end of New Zealand's South Island. Located in the centre of the island's northern coast, it stretches along 120 kilometres (75 mi) of coastline and is 70 kilometres (43 mi) across at its widest point. It is an arm of the Tasman Sea, lying on the western approach to Cook Strait.
Lepidium is a genus of plants in the mustard/cabbage family, Brassicaceae. The genus is widely distributed in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. It includes familiar species such as garden cress, maca, and dittander. General common names include peppercress, peppergrass, pepperweed, and pepperwort. Some species form tumbleweeds. The genus name Lepidium is a Greek word meaning 'small scale', which is thought to be derived from a folk medicine usage of the plant to treat leprosy, which cause small scales on the skin. Another meaning is related to the small scale-like fruit.
Lepidium campestre, the field pepperwort, field peppercress, field peppergrass, field pepperweed or field cress, is usually a biennial with some form of annual plant in the Brassicaceae or mustard family, native to Europe, but commonly found in North America as an invasive weed. The most notable characteristic of field pepperweed is the raceme of flowers which forks off of the stem. These racemes are made up of first small white flowers and later green, flat and oval seedpods each about 6 mm long and 4 mm wide. Each seedpod contains two brown, 2.5 mm long seeds.
Carmichaelia is a genus of 24 plant species belonging to Fabaceae, the legume family. All but one species are native to New Zealand; the exception, Carmichaelia exsul, is native to Lord Howe Island and presumably dispersed there from New Zealand.
Clianthus, commonly known as kakabeak, is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family Fabaceae, comprising two species of shrubs endemic to the North Island of New Zealand. They have striking clusters of red flowers which resemble the beak of the kākā, a New Zealand parrot. The plants are also known as parrot's beak, parrot's bill and lobster claw – all references to the distinctive flowers. There is also a variety with white to creamy coloured flowers called: "Albus," and a variety with rosy pink flowers called: "Roseus."
Muehlenbeckia astonii or shrubby tororaro is an endemic New Zealand shrub in the family Polygonaceae. It has distinctive small heart-shaped deciduous leaves amidst a tangle of wiry interlocking branches. Although common in cultivation around the world, it is extremely rare and threatened in the wild.
The flora of the Chatham Islands consists of around 388 terrestrial plant species, of which 47 are endemic. The Chatham Islands make up the Chatham floristic province of the Neozeylandic Region of the Antarctic Kingdom.
Lepidium oleraceum is a herb in the family Brassicaceae, endemic to New Zealand. Its English common name is Cook's scurvy grass; Māori names include nau, ngau, naunau and heketara.
Apium prostratum, commonly known as sea celery, is a variable herb native to coastal Australia and New Zealand. The leaves are variable, with toothed leaflets, and a celery like aroma. The tiny white flowers occur in clusters.
Pterostylis banksii, commonly known as greenhood or tutukiwi, is a species of orchid endemic to New Zealand. Non-flowering plants have a rosette of leaves. Flowering plants have leaves on the flowering stem, some of which reach above the single relatively large, green flower with translucent white stripes. It is the most common, widespread and largest New Zealand greenhood and is found on both of the main islands.
Carmichaelia muritai, common name coastal tree broom, is a species of plant in the family Fabaceae. It is found only in the South Island of New Zealand.
Carmichaelia petriei is a species of New Zealand broom in the genus Carmichaelia. It is endemic to New Zealand. C. petrieis is possibly a host plant for the critically endangered fungus weevil Cerius otagensis.
Pimelea actea is a small coastal plant native to New Zealand. It was named and described by Colin J. Burrows in 2008 as part of a revision of the New Zealand Pimelea, a project he had begun as a Master's thesis in the 1950s and continued in his retirement. Burrows described the species, which for some time had been referred to as Pimelea "Turakina", from a specimen collected in 1968, now in the Auckland Museum. Its species name, actea, means "coastal".
Pseudowintera traversii, sometimes called Travers horopito, is a species of woody shrub in the family Winteraceae. The specific epithet traversii is in honor of naturalist Henry H. Travers (1844–1928), son of William Thomas Locke Travers.
Leptinella filiformis, or slender button daisy, is a species of flowering plant in the daisy family, found only in the north-eastern part of the South Island of New Zealand. Thought to be extinct by the 1980s, it was rediscovered growing on a Hanmer Springs hotel lawn in 1998, and in the wild in 2015.
Motunau / Plate Island is a small island in the Bay of Plenty, roughly 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) off New Zealand's North Island at Okurei Point and a similar distance east-south-east from the much larger Mōtītī Island. The island is split into northern and southern portions by a small channel as narrow as 2 metres across, with several small sea stacks surrounding the two main parts of the island. Like many of the other islands in the Bay of Plenty, Motunau is volcanic in origin and lacks any permanent fresh water source, and as a result has not seen permanent settlement by humans.
