IS IT A HYBIRD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 45, 22 August 1938, Page 7

IS IT A HYBIRD

OR A NEW SPECIES?

KAPITI'S MYSTERY SHBU3

Special investigation of 'lybridisn among indigenous species, as-well ~w propagation and distribution of rare or desirable natives, has been an activity of the Nature Plant Preservation Society. Hybridism is a difficult subject, sometimes not easily capable ol proof or disproof. * ■ ■ . : \

Growing on Kapiti Island is a shrub or small tree which may, be either, a species of its own or a hybrid between two species. It may be' that it is'B hybrid not only between two species but between two species belonging tc different genera. The starting-point o: the controversy is thus indicated h, the annual report of the Native Plan Preservation Society: "When the lat» Dr. Cockayne pronounced leaves of plant collected on Kapiti Island abou 1926, and forwarded him -by the -la? Mr. E. Phillips-Turner, to be a hybrid Nothopanax arboreum X Pseudopant:' crassifolium var. unifoliolatum, h started something!" .

Assuming that natural cross-polling tion of the two species, producing hybrid, is possible only if the tw' : species bloom at the same time of th year, it became important to ascertai. whether they do An fact bloom at ih< same time. Such cc^-blooming coulc happen every season, or perhaps onb in particular seasons. But the society states in its repor that "searches far and wide to find the two deemed parents in bloom during the !%une period have been fruitless'" How, then, can they cross-pollinate fa produce a hybrid? Mr. Andrew Beddie, a member of the society, has made this particular group his own peculiar field. His searching* and findings to date, the report state*, have not reached the status of a conclusion but "would seem to disprove of the subject (the alleged hybrid) being other than a true species." This contribution, incomplete, to the question of hybridism has already involved much field work by members of the society. "Several expeditions to Kapiti, the collection of seeds and plants during numerous forays to Waikanae, intensive searches along the littoral creeks and swamps, rendered a horde of data to be duly sifted and weighed." If the two deemed parents wer© found, blooming together, in such circumstances as would allow. natural cross-pollination, it might also be possible for a man -with a brush, or some such implement, to give effect artificially to cross-pollination. If artificial cross-pollination could be carried 6i|t in conditions excluding any other possible form of pollination, and if tuft result was the growth of the alleged hybrid, that fact would be valuable evidence in support of Dr. Cockayne&r theory. Failing a co-blooming period, might it be possible to effect artificial crosspollination by collecting pollen from flowers of one of the deemed parents and preserving the pollen until such time as the other deemed paireiit blooms, and then by cross-ppUinating? Members of the society think that this important question might possibly be answered in the affirmative, for the committee states in the annual report that it has under? consideration "a formula for preserving the pollen from any designated plant for /ladefinite periods of from five days in some cases to nine months 4 inl.;;oth^i. The tremendously enlarged^ field opened up for investigational proof has amazing possibilities."

Pseudopanax crassifolium is the '.at* dinary lancewood, or horoeka.. \