FERN APPEAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 3, 3 July 1940, Page 9

FERN APPEAL

FOR BOTANICAL GARDENS

People going to the Begonia House in the Botanical Gardens pass the fernery. Some look in there, some do not. But there will soon be additional reason for looking into the fernery; for its reorganisation is approaching completion, and the magnificent kingferns (Marattia fraxinea, the para of the Maori) which have been one of its chief treasures will now be seen to better advantage. Gradually they will be reinforced by other native ferns, and it is planned to make the fernery representative of New Zealand's indigenous fern life.

To make room, the former rock-con-tent of the fernery has been reduced. The fernery can spare these rocks, which were gathered on the Island Bay beach some thirty years ago. Some huge and handsome sea-worn rocks will now be seen in other parts of the gardens; while the fernery, which has plenty of rocks left, will rejoice in walls of "punga" (tree-fern trunks) salvaged from the Exhibition and erected like Maori palisades.

The lath roof of the fernery remains in good order, and the large live treer ferns that were poking through it have found suitable outdoor sites by the stream. Already a new outdoor rockery has been created with the help of rocks spared from the fernery. The clearance reveals a date inscribed on the basic concrete work of the fernery. The date is May 19, 1909.

Any fern-grower who has a surplus of the rarer New Zealand ferns has now an opportunity, by donating his surplus, of improving the collection at the Botanical Gardens fernery, and of thus contributing to the growing interest in New Zealand ferns and in the indigenous plant life of this country. Wellington City is the cross-roads point of the Dominion, and as the Botanical Gardens and the Otari Open Air Museum are special points of interest to travellers and to visitors, it is hoped that this appeal for ferns will have a range not only in Wellington but beyond, and especially in such provincial centres as New Plymouth and Wanganui, where there are very fine private collections of ferns.