Rosemary Rock is a rugged islet, 170 m long by 40 m across at sea level, rising to about 50 m. It is the smallest of the Princes Chain of the Three Kings archipelago lying 57 km off the north-western tip of New Zealand’s

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

. It is named after the yacht ''Rosemary'', which transported researchers to the Three Kings group in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Princes Islands New Zealand Aotearoa

Flora and fauna

Plants recorded from the islet include a

glasswort The glassworts are various succulent, annual halophytic plants, that is, plants that thrive in saline environments, such as seacoasts and salt marshes. The original English glasswort plants belong to the genus ''Salicornia'', but today the glass ...

(''Salicornia australis''), New Zealand iceplant, shore groundsel, taupata and a goosefoot (''Chenopodium allanii''). It is a breeding site for a small colony, only discovered in 1983, of about 20 pairs of northern

Buller's albatross Buller's albatross (''Thalassarche bulleri'') or Buller's mollymawk, is a small mollymawk in the albatross family. It breeds on islands around New Zealand, and feeds in the seas off Australia and the South Pacific. Taxonomy Mollymawks are a ty ...

es (''Thalassarche bulleri platei''), the only known breeding site for the subspecies away from the Chatham Islands. It also has a large colony of

red-billed gull The red-billed gull (''Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae scopulinus''), also known as tarāpunga and once also known as the mackerel gull, is a native of New Zealand, being found throughout the country and on outlying islands including the Chatham ...

References

Three Kings Islands Seabird colonies Islands of the New Zealand outlying islands {{NewZealand-outlying-geo-stub

Flora and fauna

See also

References