NATURE NOTES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22305, 20 January 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES

PARSONSIA OR NEW ZEALAND JASMINE

(By L. Wi McCaskill)

When Colleen Coulter explored the bush at Orari Gorge she found a beautiful creeper on a manuka bush, and sent a piece for identification and description. The bot.anist knows it as Parsonsia Leterophylla. The first name honours Parsons, a Scotch botanist, the second, literally “different leaved,” draws attention to the strange series of leaf forms to be found on plants of different ages. The illustration shows a few of the different forms to be found; it tgould require several plates to show all the shapes and sizes. A suitable exercise for any school pupil living near the bush would be to collect and mount or sketch’ all the possible forms of* Parsonsia leaf. If we collect the seed and sow it with suitable shelter we will find the first leaves on the young plants to be small and round or oblong. The next leaves are as a rule long and narrow, much like those of

or rqunded blade. Other leaves may ' have two to four lobes on either side. As the plant grows up the leaves gradually develop along the lines of one pattern until most of them are like those on the flowering branch in the illustration. They are about two inches long, sometimes twice as thick, leathery, deep shining green above and paler below.

The stems are round, slender, and unusually pliant and tough. They find no difficulty In twining to the tops of tall trees. If there is no branch or tree for them to climb they do not hesitate to twine round each other. Quite often in the bush we will find the result—a rope-like stem made of five or six Parstjnsia stems twined round each other. It seems to like a fair amount of light to aid it in its climbing, so that we find it most common on the forest outskirts or round the margin of forest clearings.

very young lancewoods. In a few months when the plant has developed into a small twining shrub it may produce an extraordinarydiversity of patterns in its leafforms. They may be from one to five inches long, narrow, spoonshaped, or oblong. They may have a smooth margin, they may have a wavy one. Sometimes the leaf is narrow at the base _ and then expands near the tip into an oblong

Flowers are produced in midsummer. They occur in bunches from two to four inches long, usually white, sometimes pink-tipped. The fruits are narrow pods, some six inches long, and when green resemble a young kidney bean pod. As ripening proceeds the pod splits open to discharge dozens of seeds, each equipped with a downy parachute to permit dispersal by the wind.