A BOTANIST ABROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

A BOTANIST ABROAD.

CONQUESTS WITHOUT TEARS. By L. M. CRANWELL, M.A., Botanist, Auckland Museum. LAST week I described the small but important spartina experiment in Essex. Botanists ami engineers are equally concerned with it. The harbour engineer is still half afraid that its vigorous growth will reduce the storage space for tide waters when it has filled up the shallows of his harbours. This might lead to a lack of scour. In Poole Harbour, near Southampton, where great areas are already colonised, the first effect, however, has been the deepening of the channels. Poole Harbour I was fortunate enough to 6ee at low tide, when the plants were uncovered. Here the fine old Dutch botanist, Dr. J. P. Lotsy (he visited New Zealand in 1D25), was the first to realise the economic possibilities of spartina. This was in 1923. He brought across Verhoeven the engineer, and by 1924 the first Dutch plantations were thriving on the fringe of Zeeland. Let us turn to Holland, a land in which the population has increased enormously during the last century. It already teems with farmers' who wrest a living from pocket-handker-chief pieces of land. What will the future farmers do for a living? They are peaceable people, and they know that peace pays; they do not care about vain-glorious conquest. So they extend their own boundaries into the Zuider Zee, or into the rich estuaries of the Scheldt and the other rivers draining out of the neighbouring countries. These are their new kingdoms, won without the stain of blood. . Verhoeven, as I said, began government plantations in Zeeland in 1924. He is using the ability of spartina to colonise, consolidate and raise the level of soft, almost bottomless muds from four to eight inches yearly. His ranks of planters were sent out at right angles to the sea walls, choosing to go bare foot, although the English planters usually use duckboards, and they managed to plant from 200 to 500 tufts each per day. These were about nine feet apart. By 1930 these clumps had linked up. This very rapid meadowing delighted the engineers. It meant that they saved 10 years in poldering, i.e.,

enclosing each area as they moved seaward. With poldering spartina gives way to salt-loving crops, such as mangels, sugar beet and seakale. Soon cereals such as barley will follow, for, with draining, the sea salts are washed out of the soil, and a wider variety of crops can be grown. Spartina has many uses, however. Cattle are said to eat it greedily, so it is cut for hay and ensilage-making, a medium quality paper can also be made from its long fibrous stems. Knowing, then, the status of spartina in Europe we can join with Professor P. W. Oliver in his exclamation, "It is a gift from heaven!"

RICE GRASS FIGHTS MAN'S BATTLE AGAINST THE SEA. — This plant, Spartina Townshendil, is a hybrid between an American and a European species. Unlike most hybrids, its seedlings breed true. The sketch above shows young shoots and the two kinds of roots for feeding and anchoring. Both are full of air spaces and so survive in the water-logged soil. What of spartina in New Zealand? Little has been done here, apart from the experiments of Dr. H. H. Allan, and Messrs. K. and R. Dalrymple, near the mouth of the Manawatu River. The Department of Agriculture seems very suspicious of it, and perhaps they are right, since one can rarely predict the behaviour of plants newly introduced into NewZealand. Manchurian wild rice (tizania), a tall and lusty grass, has caused great trouble in the drainage area of the Northern Wairoa. Spartina, however, grows at a much lower level, standing at least six hours of submersion, and I do not think it likes much fresh water. I can see many arguments for trying it, for we have miles of low land to protect against the 6ea, especially in the Manukau, Waitemata and Kaipara harbours. Then, too, the floods wash out much of our best forest soil, and it is deposited in these estuaries. Why not reclaim this, instead of breaking our hearts over steep hill farms in hopelessly impoverished country ?