NEW ZEALAND PLANTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 59, 11 March 1937, Page 20

NEW ZEALAND PLANTS

QUEER OFFSPRING

LIKE FATHER, UNLIKE SON'

A characteristic of the New Zealand ! plant population is the great variability which occurs in many species at different periods of their existence. Often it is quite impossible for a visitor to' the bush, e*en though he may be a practised botanist, to connect up the juvenile form of certain plants with their parent. without watching the actual transitional growth trnn one form to another. After many years of observation the juvenile forms of most plants that exhibit this trait have been' recognised and described; and some very interesting series are found in' these family groups.

Many seedling forest trees start life with foliage that, is quite dissimilar to that of the older form—rimu, for instance, when young, has short, straight

needle leaves on long, drooping branches, while the twigs of the adult trees are covered with close-set, short, awl-like leaves. The kahikatea seed[ling is one of the prettiest plants ! found on the bush floor—a small green feathery'cross of four leaves, which grows up into a straggly, rusty-brown, shabby-looking shrub, passing eventually into the well-formed pyramidal, green-crowned pole stage, with closeset' cypress-like leaves. One of the most obvious plants which flowers on the edge of the bush in early spring is the kaiku —parsonsia heterophylla—with its massed sprays of * . sweet-smelling, waxy white flowers, later, on. replaced by bunches of long, narrow-pointed seed pods, which at this season of the year, give a somewhat tropical appearance to the vegetation. This plant, with its neat, ovate, pointed leaves gives no indication of the transformation which it undergoes in its youth. The germination of the seed gives rise to a twoleaved seedling, the blades being narrowed at the base and broadening into a rounded, entire-edged, spade-like tip. In the next stage the leaf becomes narrow and strap-shaped, sometimes roughly and irregularly toothed. At a further stage, when the plant has commenced toxlimbby twisting its stem around and sprawling over obstacles, the leaves are reduced to long, narrow, pointed blades, with one or two on a branch reverting back to produce very juvenile leaves with the broad, spatulate blade. Finally, these broaden and thicken into the regular, entire, pointed, ovate leaves, which give a trim greyish appearance to the bushes over which the plant sprawls. / Parsonsia belongs to an interesting botanical family of which the members are mostly tropical, and many are poisonous; k few yield latex for rubber; and many are cultivated for medicinal purposes. The Mandavillea, with showy, sweet-smelling flowers, is a creeper much cultivated in our sunnier gardens. A sinister relation is the Ordeal Tree, of Madagascar—Tanghinia venenifera —a poisonous plant which in native trials is offered to the accused, ! who is held to be not guilty if he sur[vives the ordeal of consuming it. Another related species is the Periwinkle, a charming introduction from Western Europe which is fast becoming a troublesome and persistent weed in the localities where it has been planted. These foreign genus are unlike the New Zealand species of the family in that they exhibit none of their variability of youthful forms; apparently, this is a character strongly developed in the inhabitants of our native forests, and is not confined to any particular family, but takes place in plants of many widely dissimilar botanical groups.