'LONE PINES' ALREADY IN CANTERBURY

Press, Volume CI, Issue 30004, 13 December 1962, Page 26

'LONE PINES' ALREADY IN CANTERBURY

Descendants of toe lone pine of Gallipoli are already growing in New Zealand. Several Chrlsterrurch residents telephoned "The Press" with this information after reading an Auckland report that members of the Bay of Plenty Gallipoli Veterans’ Association had arrived home from Australia with seeds from daughtertrees of the pine. The “lone pine" (the species is Pinius haJapensisi was the only tree on a plateau across which a sixday battle was fought at Gallipoli in August, 1915. Two descendants of the lone pine are in Canterbury —one at Elizabeth Park, a short way up the hill from the Sign of the Takahe in Cashmetre, and the other outside the front door of the Ashburton Returned Services’ Association headquarters. Four others are believed to be growing in various places in Hawke’s Bay. The six New Zealand pines were grown from seed planted in Hawke's Bay about 1954. The seed came from trees grown in Australia from seed collected from the lone pine in the 1930'5. The Ashburton tree is about Bft high, and the Christchurch tree about sft high. Both Canterbury trees have plaques describing their origin. The stone on which the plaque for the Ashburton tree is fixed was itself brought from Gallipoli. The four-acre Elizabeth Park in Which the Christchurch tree stands is a memorial park to the Canterbury Main Body volunteers who left New Zealand in October, 1914.

An attempt to grow Flanders poppies in Elizabeth Park by scattering seed amongst toe gross seems so fair to have failed. The seed, supplied by Mr W. Brackman, of the Main Body Assoctaitoa, was scattered in August, but so far no poppies have appeared. An independent attempt to grow poppies in. Chiristehuroh has, however, been successful. At last evening’s joint Christmas party of the Aegean Society amd the Main Body Association, Mr J. Stevens, a member of the society, showed a bunch of poppies he had raised at his home in Hei Hei from seed brought from beside the New Zealand World War I ntooumcnit at Grabenstafel, Belgium, by Mr D’A. Blackburn, of Gisborne. Mr Sitevens intends to propagate the poppies to the extent where he will be aibie to give seed to churches and other organisations to grow poppies for Remembrance Sunday and perhaps Anzac Day observances.