New Zealand Journal of Ecology

Tree fern trunks provide establishment surfaces and habitat for a range of plant taxa including many understorey shrubs and canopy trees.The importance of these habitats for augmenting forest biodiversity and woody plant regeneration processes has been the subject of conjecture but has not been robustly assessed.We undertook a latitudinal study of the woody epiphytes and hemiepiphytes of two species of tree ferns (Cyathea smithii, Dicksonia squarrosa) at seven sites throughout New Zealand to determine (1) compositional variation with survey area, host identity, and tree fern size, and (2) the frequency of woody epiphyte and hemiepiphyte occurrence, in particular that of mature individuals.We recorded 3441…