Joseph Hooker visited the subantarctic islands as a botanist on James Clark Ross's expedition in 1840, and published the first great scientific study of the region. Flora antarctica was the first volume of his three-part work Botany of the Antarctic voyage, and was considered the most significant because it recorded the extraordinarily rich botanical life of the region. This plate depicts Dracophyllum longifolium, which is endemic to the larger New Zealand region.