CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 70, 20 September 1937, Page 8

CORRESPONDENCE

OUR NATIVE PLANTS

WORK OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—As a reader keenly Interested in our native plants and as a member of the New Zealand Plant Preservation Society, it gave me much pleasure to read your article in Saturday's "Evening Post" entitled "Rare Species." Such articles are timely, because a critical stage has been reached in the history of the New Zealand, flora, of which all too few persons seem to be cognisant. Many native plants have always been rare so far as botanists are yet aware (e.g., Celmisia Macmahoni, Tetrachondra Hamiltoni, Ranunculus recens, Veronica Canescens, etc., etc.). Others once common have ceased to be so, and of these a small number are thought to be approaching extinction.

The Chatham Island lily, so-called, in reality a giant forget-me-not, which once almost encircled Chatham Island, had been reduced at the time of my visit a few years ago to three small clumps, the largest not a square chain in area, and a few isolated plants. The monotypic genus Coxella was also at the time of my visit restricted to inaccessible stations on precipitous rocks and cliffs. Again, in the region of Mount Cook or of Arthur's Pass, the Mount Cook lily, which once grew in such profusion, is today a thing of great rarity consequent on the depredations of deer and other imported game animals; and what is true of such conspicuous and beautiful horticultural endemics, must be no less true of many less obvious species.

A realisation of the ,extent of the destruction being wrought by game animals, fire, man himself, flocks and herds, etc., was responsible for a movement initiated by the late Mr. Helyar, of Lower Hutt, and which has now culminated in the recentlyformed Native Plant Preservation Society, to compile records of the present degree of rarity or supposed rarity of the wild plants of New Zealand, with a view to their preservation both in Nature, if necessary, and in cultivation if suitable.

The first lists compiled were submitted to various botanical authorities, and from information thus received it was found possible to greatly reduce the number of "possibly rare" plants. Every subsequent elimination from the initial lists was a source of satisfaction to the society, but there yet remained a considerable number of plants which it was thought wise to propagate and distribute to such curators of public reserves and botanical gardens (about thirty) as were interested in the movement.

The practical work of propagation and distribution has been no less arduous than valuable. Everywhere the society has had the willing cooperation of botanically-minded people throughout the country who have collected the initial material for propagation, but the work has grown to such dimensions that it is hoped that in some way it may be linked with that being undertaken at the open-air plant museum at Otari—a civic and national undertaking ihodest in its beginnings but with wonderful possibilities for the future.

With an adequate staff- working under competent supervision with respect to the compiling of botanical records on one hand and the gathering, propagation, and cultivation of the plants on the other, and with adequate financial aid, it would be possible to do a work at Otari of the highest national and scientific importance, far surpassing that of any botanical garden, and of a kind possibly not paralleled elsewhere in the world. Here might be preserved and propagated all plants threatened with extinction from any cause.

Incidentally, it seems to the writer that if Dr. Cockayne's dream of Otari is to be realised in our generation, the fine development work already accomplished by Mr. MacKenzie and his staff will have to be supplemented by activities only possible with adequate financial and botanical assistance. The cost will probably require an annual expenditure of between three and four thousand pounds, doubtless necessitating a substantial Government subsidy for what is, in any case, a work of national importance. This is a very modest sum in reality and much more worth while than is generally realised.

I hope, Sir, your timely article will arouse the interest and attention it merits.—l am, etc.,

WILLIAM MARTIN.