AGM and talk: Gardens without weeds.

Guest speaker Associate Professor Helen Leach, an anthropologist with a special interest in palaeoethnobotany. When Dr Monkhouse described Maori gardens seen in 1769 as "completely cleared of all weeds", did he mean that the gardeners were fastidious weeders, or were there just fewer weeds to eradicate? Did the Maori and other Polynesian peoples have a concept of weeds equivalent to that in European languages? This talk will look at indigenous plants that might have invaded Maori gardens, the inadvertent introduction of a small number of fellow travelers with Maori cultigens, and how different groups of Polynesians might have classified the plants that we call 'weeds'. At the NEW Zoology Benham Building, 346 Great King Street, behind the Zoology car park by the Captain Cook Hotel. Use the main entrance of the Benham Building to get in and go to the Benham Seminar Room, Rm. 215, 2nd floor. Please be prompt as we have to hold the door open.