New Zealand's Alpine Plants

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31730, 13 July 1968, Page 4

New Zealand's Alpine Plants

Field Guide to the Alpine Plants of New Zealand. By John T. Salmon, D.Sc, F.R.S.N.Z., F.R.P.S. A. H. and A. W. Reed. 320 pp. Index. Bibliography. What a world of beauty Professor Salmon’s splendid book opens to the reader. Each glossy page is almost completely taken up with one and sometimes two highgrade colour plates, which are arranged in ecological divisions and which show very clearly the essential features of the plant. Under each is a caption with the

name, where it was photographed and when. Each photograph is also accompanied by a short paragraph describing habitat, flowering period, family and any additional information not shown in the photograph, such as relative sizes and measurements. Thus a plate showing a spray of gleaming leaves and red berries is captioned “Mountain Wineberry, close-up of leaves and fruits, Arthur’s Pass (April),” and in the descriptive paragraph the plant is said to be “A much - branched, somewhat

tangled but variable shrub . . . ovate or ovate-oblong leaves 5-15 mm long," and its distribution throughout New Zealand’s sub-alpine scrub, grasslands and fell-fields given. With the sub-alpines and alpines Professor Salmon includes the altitude at which the specimen was seen, in metres and feet. Except for plants such as Vegetable Sheep, which shows its most characteristic form when viewed from a distance, the plants were all photographed extremely closeup, and each one is a work of art, with the scree, rock or moss background, muted or sharp as the subject demands. Although New Zealand alpines are mainly white and yellow with occasional pale blues and pinks, Professor Salmon’s excellent photographs show what a wide sweep of the spectrum they cover. Professor Salmon, currently lecturing at Victoria University, is a well-known and distinguished figure as a writer and broadcaster on scientific subjects. He says he was urged by trampers and other friends to write a reference work on New Zealand alpine plants that could be easily taken into the me. itains. How well he has succeeded will be obvious to all his readers. His sturdy little plastic-sheathed book will be enjoyed and consulted again and again by a large segment of the country’s population. The book is dedicated to the author’s three sons, Guy, lan and Roy, “who came with me on many happy excursions into the alpine regions of New Zealand during the preparation of the book.”