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A reappraisal of the conservation status of the indigenous New Zealand vascular plant flora is presented. The list comprises 792 taxa (34% of New Zealand's total indigenous vascular flora) in the following categories: Extinct 4 taxa, Acutely Threatened 122 taxa (comprising 47 taxa Nationally Critical, 54 Nationally Endangered, 21 Nationally Vulnerable), Chronically Threatened 96 taxa (comprising Serious Decline 26 taxa, Gradual Decline 70 taxa), At Risk 499 taxa (comprising Sparse 126 taxa, Range Restricted 373 taxa), Non-resident Native 26 taxa (comprising Vagrant 16 taxa, Colonist 10 taxa), and Data Deficient 45 taxa. A further 208 plants are listed as Taxonomically Indeterminate, being those which might warrant further conservation attention once their taxonomic status is clarified. A further 31 named taxa and 18 rated as Taxonomically Indeterminate, and previously considered to be threatened and/or uncommon, are removed from this updated listing. A concordance of plant names is provided. The lists presented use a new threat classification system developed by the New Zealand Department of Conservation for sole use within this country. This paper represents the first time the entire known indigenous vascular flora has been assessed from a conservation perspective since the mid 1970s. A brief analysis of the patterns of rarity exhibited by the taxa listed is presented.

Tree rings from a section of Prumnopitys taxifolia (matai) covering the period AD 1335-1745 have been radiocarbon dated and used to generate a 14C calibration curve for southern hemisphere wood. Comparison of this curve with calibration data for northern hemisphere wood does not show a systematic difference between 14C ages measured in the northern and southern hemispheres. A floating chronology covering 270 yr and terminating at the last Taupo (New Zealand) eruption, derived from a sequence of 10-yr samples of tree rings from Phyllocladus trichomanoides (celery pine, or tanekaha), is also consistent with the absence of a systematic north-south difference, and together with the matai data, fixes the date of the Taupo eruption at AD 232 ± 15.

The monotypic genus Manoao is erected to accommodate Lagarostrobos colensoi, silver pine, because the character-states of L. colensoi, endemic to New Zealand, and those of Huon pine, L.franklinii, endemic to Tasmania, are so divergent as to warrant treatment as separate genera distinct from Dacrydium and the other segregate genera Halocarpus and Lepidothamnus. As a consequence, Lagarostrobos is redefined to include the type and sole extant species, L. franklinii. The necessary new combination and transfer are made, and names previously assigned to both species are typified.

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