Seaweeds of New Zealand: An Illustrated Guide

1994

Science QK577.5 A615

Christchurch: Canterbury University Press

Nancy Adams (1926-2007) was a botanist and a highly skilled artist, who worked at the Dominion Museum (now Te Papa) from 1959. During her career, she illustrated almost 40 books, including Professor Sir Alan Mark’s New Zealand Alpine Plants (1973; 1986; 1995). There are thousands of species of seaweed growing in the seas and oceans around the world. Adams’s Seaweeds of New Zealand, which won the Montana Book of the Year Award in 1995, describes 600 New Zealand varieties, with illustrations of 441. Red seaweeds, of which the genus Gigartina is one, are known to contain sulphated polysaccharides or carrageenans ‘which exhibit many beneficial biological activities such as anticoagulant, antiviral, antioxidative, anticancer and immunomodulating activities’ (Wijesekar et al, 2011).