Mast Flowering/Seeding Events in New Zealand Plants

The aim of this project is to record any heavy flowering/seeding (seed masting) events occurring in New Zealand native plant groups over the years. It would be interesting to see if any patterns become apparent and what plant groups have similar 'Masting' cue's. A masting event can be classified as a synchronised heavy seeding event across a species, genus or family of plants in a certain area ie. not just one plant flowering heavily in that area. Masting events are often triggered by external environmental cues which cause mass synchronised flowering, sometimes over large areas of the country.

Below is a description of Mast seeding sourced from Wikipedia. To see actual page follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_%28botany%29

Mast seeding

A mast year is a year in which much more mast than usual is produced. The phrase originally applied solely to trees, like oak trees, that produce fruit useful for feeding farm animals.

Mast seeding or masting[3] is a mass-seeding phenomenon exhibited by some species of plants, which can be defined as "synchronous production of seed at long intervals by a population of plants".[4] Masting, in the strict sense of the term, occurs only in monocarpic (or semelparous) species, whose members reproduce only once during their lifetime, then die.[5]

The prolific seeding provides food for animals like rats and stoats, whose populations can explode during a mast year, having been reduced by a lack of food in previous non-mast years. In turn, this makes it more likely that birds will be targeted by the pests,[6] or that rats will invade nearby fields in what is called a "rat flood".[7]

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