Rambles along Nature's Highway

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

Rambles along Nature's Highway

in dried for identification, so you can imagine how thrilled 1 was to recognise another species in Australia. Mount Lofty.

In Melbourne I spent most of my time in the Botanical Gardens, but in Adelaide 1 went straight to the mountains, which form such a pretty background from desolate Port Adelaide, where, however, 1 longed to spend a few hours fossicking amongst the salt-loving plants of the low, sandy shore. Here snakes abound in summer, but in winter the massed spikes of the classical asphodel are the chief attraction. In New Zealand, too, you will sometimes find a patch of asphodel on ' the northern dunes. Adelaide streets were full of trees in greener leaf than those in Melbourne. Beyond the city I climbed through pretty ravines with scattered trees on a closely-cropped sward gashed here and there where beautiful red rock was being quarried for the multi-coloured hoxises below.' Land here at from £7 to £20 an acre seemed very cheap indeed. Where the main road swept away into the blue ranges, I turned to the left and soon reached the top of Mount Lofty, about 2000 ft above sea level. Here the white Flinders' Column has been placed to mark where Flinders picked out the mountain from Kangaroo Island. It was overcast for a while, and the cold wind came sweeping in from the roadstead, and all the trees looked dull and unattractive. Then the sunshine came nnd I saw how beautiful this open forest could be with its many flowers and its tangles of Cassytha writhing over everything. Cassvtlia is a most curious parasite. It is brown, leafless, sometimes furry, and it clings to its host plant by means of little sucker pads. The flowers are minute, and the fruit usually ridged, and in the New Zealand species, speckled with red. It has its hand in nearly every plant pocket. I have even seen it as a parasite on the Monterey pines at Waipoua, where it was found by Mr. A. D. McKinnon. (You'd never dream that it was related to the lofty tawa and taraire.)

Overlooking a sheltered valley stood a castle belonging to the w'ellknown Cornishtnan Sir Langdon Bonython, and here I spent a pleasant hour looking through a splendid garden full of rhododendrons and rich-coloured deciduous trees. Inside that gate Australia seemed banished for ever. Then I came on a great open patch of Australian trees, white trunked or black, where they had been singed by light fires and there grew only native wildflowers, mainly tones of red pink and white at this time of the year, and I knew that tlie man who planned that surprise was an artist. Heavy mixtures of shrubs crowd out the slender heaths, and they- are always encouraged by burning.