The beauties that skiers never see

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 17

The beauties that skiers never see

If you are out in the ski-fields this winter, risking the highest and steepest of the downhill runs or just messing about on the learner slopes, spare a thought for the beauty that lies underneath your feet — a beauty that those for whom the pleasures of winter sports are mountains’ only attractions are bound never to see.

Beneath the dull and featureless winter snow covering of the ski slopes lies a remarkable variety of native plants, almost exclusively unique to New Zealand, and a range of habitats where these plants grow in close-knit and finely balanced communities.

Many of the plants are closely related to familiar lowland species, and thus are wonderful examples of the ability of species to adapt to hostile environments. In summer, the high mountain slopes come alive with their flowers.

Distinct communities grow in the different habitats.

In the flushes, or seepage areas, there is often some shelter from the winds, and the soil may be peatlike and moisture-retentive through the accumulation of decayed litter from many generations of plants. In these areas growth of many competing species frequently creates a dense alpine turf in which only close examination will reveal the very large number of

species present. Some may be so small that their growth should be measured in millimetres. Prominent in these communities are species of epilobium (willow herb), acaena (bidybid), celmisia, raoulia, myosotis (forget-me-not), senecio, small prostrate heath-like shrubs, and many other plants. Here, too, may be found the native “marsh marigolds,” calthas, with their oddly shaped leaves in which the two rearmost lobes are folded upwards, like ears. On the fellfields, rocky ridges among the outcrops, may be found a different community, often dominated by cushion plants, rosette herbs, mat plants, and plants with small or very rigid leaves — shapes and sizes adapted to the harsh conditions. Many of these plants have flowers of much beauty, or large showy flowers which seem out of proportion to the size of the plants.

If nature failed to deck the forest and the grassland with beautiful blossoms, she made ample amends, wrote the famous botanist, Leonard Cockayne, in the high mountains, though she was not lavish with colour.

With few exceptions, the flowers are white or yellow.

Plants of the fellfields include two hebes of extraordinary precise and geometric beauty of leaf form. Hebe haastii and epacridea; the

cushion plants Phyllachne and Chionohebe; and, on Mt Hutt, the rare Raoulia youngii, which is found only near the summit and is so adapted to its alpine life as to be difficult, perhaps impossible, to cultivate.

But the most unusual, and most extremely adapted, plants are found on the great screes which in winter become the main ski slopes. There, they enjoy what must be one of the most harsh environments imaginable. Frosts occur in all seasons, and may last for days; gales, which may be either humid or dessicating, are frequent; rain and mist alternate with periods of sunlight far more intense than that of the lowlands; periods of drought alternate with periods when the ground is saturated; snow lies for months in winter and may fall at any time of the year; the soil water is very cold, even on the hottest days of summer; surface temperatures of the soil may be very high, while the air is cold. Many mountain plants have only a brief growing season. Avalanches, both of snow and stones, are frequent. The plants which grow under these conditions, in what appears to be broken, unstable, and constantly moving rock, including an assemblage of the most curious and most beautiful known. Most of them have fleshy or woolly leaves, of a grey or ashen colour often

indistinguishable to the casual glance from the scattered rock fragments. Some have bold flowers, or have bright red flushes on their leaves.

On Mt Hutt, Canterbury’s most popular ski-field, these plants, which are never seen by the many people who ski there throughout the winter months, include some unlikely members of such familiar garden families as the buttercups, the daisies, and the lobelias.

The daisies, perhaps the most extraordinary of all, are far removed from the familiar garden members of this family.

The name of Julius von Haast, the noted nineteenth-century geologist and founder of the Canterbury Museum, is commemorated in the genus Haastia, two species of which grow on the high screes and summit ridges of Mt Hutt. They are low plants, all of whose exposed parts are densely covered with flocculent, whitish hairs, beneath which questing fingers may reveal normal-looking foliage. The smaller and more severely adapted species is Haastia sinclairii, which grows in the screes, where its underground stems may run for many metres through the loose rubble, but only scattered short shoots appear above the surface.

Haastia recurva grows in the

larger broken rubble below crags and outcrops, where its roots can run back into rock crevices while its flocculent leaves and stems seek the sun.

A vegetable sheep, Raoulia mammilaris, also grows on the high crags and outcrops, forming woolly domes so hard and dense they can be trodden on without injury. At a lower altitude on the mountain, alongside the road, another, and larger, “sheep,” Raoulia eximia, may be seen. The popular name of these plants arose from their dense, woolly growth and cushion shape, which from a distance does look like a sheep. Unlikely though it may seem they are, along with the haastias, members of the daisy family. Slow-growing, so much so that the oldest specimens, a metre or more across, may be aged hundreds of years, the vegetable sheep represent a superb adaptation to an inhospitable environment.

Their tough exterior, comprised of countless tiny leaf rosettes tightly crammed together, protects them from damage; beneath, and unseen unless the cushion is forced open with a sharp object, is a mass of damp and decaying remains of old leaves, flowers, and stems, through which young roots from the newest rosettes are growing, so that the plant is to an extent feeding upon itself. Widespread on the ski-field screes of Mt Hutt are two other plants which bear the name of Julius von Haast. These are Hebe haastii and Ranunculus haastii. The ranunculus, a member of the buttercup family, is arguably one of the world’s most beautiful alpine plants, and certainly one of the most beautiful New Zealanders. It is another superb example of a plant’s adaptation to a specialised form of existence to cope with an extremely demanding habitat. Huge, blue-green, fleshy leaves, basically heart-shaped but with the

edges deeply scalloped, stand above the scree on thick, short, fleshy stems, and are so effectively camouflaged by their colour that they are sometimes almost impossible to see. Well below the surface, the leaves spring from a succulent, knobbly rhizome, buried at the depth where the larger surface rubble meets the fine, puggy debris underneath. From this underground stem tough, string-like roots run, often for many metres, up and down the slope. In summer the flowers, large golden goblets, appear; and in autumn they are followed by large, handsome, club-shaped fruit. So

fiercely is this buttercup adapted to its hostile and unstable environment that it will pine and die very quickly if removed to the kinder climate of the lowland.

Hebe haastii. also, will pine and die rapidly if removed from its alpine environment. It grows in the fellfields and on the exposed high outcrops as well as in the scree, and is one of the true high fliers of the New Zealand flora. On the Main Divide it has been found on exposed outcrops in the nival zone, above the permanent snowline.

Another inhabitant of these hostile screes is the famous "penwiper plant." Notothlaspi rosulatum. Whereas the others mentioned are perennial, living on from year to year, the penwiper is what botanists call "monocarpic" — it germinates. grows to flowering size (a process which in the mountain environment may take two or several years), then flowers, seeds, and dies. The flowers are intensely fragant. The natural form of this plant is the rosette, and even when not flowering it can be. with its closely overlapping leaves, quite beautiful. Yet it belongs to the large family of coarse weeds and vegetables which include the cabbage and the turnip.

Not to be overlooked, also, is the almost equally famous "black cotula,” Cotula atrata. a ferny-leafed little plant with questing stems which run around widely in the scree, and send up at intervals leaf-tufts topped throughout summer by a succession of lOc-sized black-magenta buttons.

New Zealand members of this family of button daisies are found in a variety of habitats, from the seashore to the mountain tops, but Cotula atrata is typically a plant of the great screes of Canterbury's eastern mountains. It is abundant on Mt Hutt. A yellow-flowered form which sometimes occurs is known as Cotula dendvi.