Native Wildflowers

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 156, 3 July 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

Native Wildflowers

OUR TREES. No. XVII.—THE BEECH FORESTS. By L. M. CRANWELL. M.A.. OLR climb hist week took us up a steep ridge into the silence cf •t:ie forest. Even the voices of the streams far below were lost, and the stifF leaves of the clinker beech were still. Only in the long aisles oi tho kauri did the fingers of the wind pluck out a little tune towards dusk, if indeed that sweet murmur was ever really silent throughout the day. Do your ears ever catch that music of the upper branches? I looked at thei=e ranges south of Auckland with keen interest because here both kauri and beech are lusty, with an astonishingly high birth rate. They seem in harmony, neither taking the upper hand "for long stretches at a time, and so the} - must have been for centuries, as the beech '"mother" tree-s have grown to maturity, with a diameter of 3ft or 4ft, have shed their seed and have raised daughter generations around them. And so this has gone on until the forest is dotted with the dry, quietly crumbling hulks of the very old trees. Kauri's life cycle, though longer, has been the same. Where beech is best suited the undergrowth is more open.

In some of the South Island beech forests, especially those of a dry type, there may be almost no undergrowth; even mosses, and ferns are few. So long have sheep and red deer been in these forests that it is difficult to know whether they have always been so bare. It is interesting, however, to note that the beech forests of southernmost South

America show the same crowded tree development, with few shrubs, etc., near the forest floor.

Our species are known as the southern beeches (Nothofagus) to distinguish them from the northern hemisphere beeches (fagus) with which they were first allietf. All belong to the Fagaccae, a family embracing oak and hornbeam (of which I have just seen «plemlid specimens at Ruakura Experimental Farm) as well.

Auckland children " ill find it difficult to realise that trees they have never seen form a vast part of the forests of all high country south of the Mamaku Plateau, while in the South Island beech forest is more general still at all elevations where trees can grow. Pictorial journals will have made their outline.s familiar, I trust. They form the picturesque snow-laden settings to views of Tongariro and Ruapeliu, to Arthur's Pass, and to scenes in the Mount Cook district. The track to Milford Sound runs through such glorious forest, while the new mountain roads are being hacked through it. Beech forest of stunted size may cling to rough mountain sides almost unnoticed, but there it deserves the greatest praise for its work of protection. Every surface-wandering root is like a chain binding the dry boulders in their place.

This week I 'am giving a photograph that shows the beauty of the beech forest. Just imagine that you are on that path amon* crisp yellowgreen ferns. You look up at the huge trunks covered with their velvety black fungus, growths and you see the flaring red or yellow maeses of mistletoe flowers. Do you not draw in a deep breath of joy in the sun-dappled forest ? Do you not think next that it is worth saving?