150 Different Grasses

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 171, 22 July 1939, Page 9

150 Different Grasses

GROWING IN THE NORTH ISLAND The approximately half the North Island was grassland, and that there were 150 different grasses in New Zealand, were facts reveled by Mr. E. A. Maddn in an address before members of the Palmerston North Citizens’ Lunch Club yesterday. Each of these grasses liked certain conditions, or had their particular habitat. They ranged from those that grew in a dry area to those suited to a heavy rainfall, from those accustomed to tropical temperatures to those growing practically at the line of perpetual snow. Different grasses grew in salt water, on sand dunes, in swamp uxeas, on alluvial plains and on hill country. The hill-country grasses on parts of the East Coast were a natural covering, but in other parts of tho North Island the original bush country had been established in grass, and in the course of the conversion tho land had to go through phases. So far few areas had been successfully converted from forest to grass, owing to tho inroads of noxious weeds and ferns. Such country, however, someday would feed tho good country on tho flats with breeding ewes and cows, and so was of potential value to New Zealand.

Alpine country was mainly in tussocks, few of which were edible, and had been gradually destroyed by repeated burning off. Parts of the South Island had become nothing but shingle country and had to be shut up. for regeneration.