MAORI NATURE NOTES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 300, 4 December 1929, Page 9

MAORI NATURE NOTES

FOR TRIBUNE READERS (Copyright—J.H.S.) Readers of the “Tribune” who are interested in the Hora and bird life of New Zealand, by cutting out these Maori Nature Notes, each day as they appear and filing them in a suitable scrap hook, may compile a book of reference which will be to them a source of pleasure and instruction in the years to come. HOROEKA (pointing upward), known to us as Lancewood, is surely the most interesting of all forest products. In his enthusiasm, after 16,000 miles on the Beagle in search of proofs of evolution, Darwin may well have said, “Here for the first time have 1 seen my theory confirmed in the life of a single plant.” The hard wood requires light or heat to develop it. Being in the forest shade, it seeks warmth from the earth by developing leaves three feet long, and pointing them downward. Prickles are grown to protect them from browsing animals. Rapid ascent (as its name indicates), soon raises it above the forest to the sunlight. Warmth from the surface. being uo longer necessary or possible, the upper leaves, now only an inch long, point upward so the sun, and, being out of harm’s way, lose their prickly protection. After about three years’ growth, garden lovers may admire the two distinct groups of leaves on the one plant.