Dry Bush is added stimulus to Mt Vernon public appeal

Press, 4 May 1984, Page 15

Dry Bush is added stimulus to Mt Vernon public appeal

By

DERRICK ROONEY

A little-publicised aspect of Mount Vernon, the Port Hills grazing block for which the Christchurch Civic Trust has launched a public appeal, in the hope of raising $380,000 to buy the property for the people of Christchurch, is that the property includes a small, depleted bush remnant which is of considerable scientific and historic interest. This is Dry Bush, situated in a gully below the Summit Road, part-way between Dyers Pass Road and Rapaki Road. Its significance is that it was one of the first areas of bush in the South Island whose flora and fauna were the subject of detailed scientific scrutiny. Dry Bush was one of the places visited by Edward Meyrick between 1880 and 1886, when he was classics teacher at the Cathedral Grammar School. After his return to England to become a classics master at Marlborough School, Meyrick became a world authority on small moths, and described more than 12,000 species. He named about 60 per cent of New Zealand’s species of moths. In his “Diary of Captures” now held in the natural history section of the British Museum, Meyrick described a collecting trip to Dry

Bush on December 27, 1882, when he captured 21 species of moths. Because some of these moths have restricted host ranges, they indicate some of the plants that were present then — such as coprosmas, mahoe, muehlenbeckia, mountain ribbonwood, and native convolvulus. Dry Bush was originally part of a 50-acre block taken up on September 2, 1850, by T. F. Peel. Subsequently, in 1854, it was advertised as “50 acres of freehold land, 12 acres of which is beautifully timbered.” Most of the original bush was cut out during the first 20 years of settlement to provide firewood or fencing, but when J. F. Armstrong, founder of the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, visited the site in 1870 he was able to find 98 species of trees, shrubs, herbs, climbers and ferns, 11 mosses, two lichens, and four fungi. Armstrong noted that Dry Bush, which could be seen from the streets of Christchurch, had a scorched appearance “from the numerous fires having passed through it." Though it contained

some large native conifers, it had “more the characteristics of that portion of our bush vegetation which invariably edges our larger forests.” Some 69 years later, when W. R. Boyce surveyed Dry Bush as part of a wider survey of the grasslands vegetation of the area of the Port Hills, the number of forest species was reduced to about 50, livestock had destroyed the undergrowth, and there was no regeneration. Severe wilting occurred in the bush in summer. Debilitated trees growing on the hillside indicated the former limits of the bush. In 1968, the Summit Road Scenic Society decided to try to save the remnant of Dry Bush, and reached agreement with the then owner on a fenceline to enclose an area of about o.6ha. Though the property was sold before the fence was completed, the new owners permitted the society to complete the fence. This was done late in 1969. Members of the society, including Messrs C. Holdsworth and C. H. Turner, later planted numerous native seedlings witfrin the fence,

with little success on the exposed eastern side of the bush but more encouraging results on the sheltered western side. Six years later, when scientists from the Botany Division of the D.S.I.R. and members of the Canterbury Botanical Society studied Dry Bush, the number of native plant species present had risen to 85. There were also 34 adventive species. However, only two of the large native conifers, both matais, remained alive in the bush, and a totara which had been recorded by Boyce in 1939 was gone. The sole remaining kahikatea, outside the fence and unprotected, faced an uncertain future. “The efforts of the Summit Road Scenic Society have given this historic scrap of valley bush a chance of survival,” wrote Mrs M. J. A. Bulfin, of the Botany Division, in a report in the “Canterbury Botanical Journal.” “The protection from grazing has resulted in a dense herbaceous undergrowth, thereby increasing the humidity within the bush. With continued protection, future regeneration will be of interest.” Presumably these chances of survival will be further enhanced if the campaign to raise the money to bring Mount Vernon into public ownership is successful. <