Seeds of New Zealand gymnosperms and dicotyledons2001

"Thsi guide provides, for the first time, an account of the seeds and other persistent parts of fruits for New Zealand plants. ... Because seeds survive long after most plant parts have deteriorated, the guide will assist in many sciences: in analysing diet from the gut, gizzard contents or faeces of mammals or birds, recreating past plant distributins from deposits in bogs or soils, and determining native food and criop plants at archaeological sites. And because seeds are relatively conservative structures in terms of their evolutionary diversification, it will also a wealth of information of use in plant identification and classification - a critical science for conservation of biodiversity."--Back cover.