The Botany of Auckland

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 13 (Supplement)

The Botany of Auckland

No. 11lRain Forest on the Waitahere (Continued) Specially Written for the New Zea and Herald By PROFESSOR ARNOLD WALL i.nd LUCY M. CRANWELL, M.A. ££-g" "J ARDWOGD" or dicotylous I I trees, cften with Malayan affinities, are among the most striking constituents of the rain forests on the Waitakere Eange. Space permits -mention of only the most striking, beautiful, or interesting of them, or of the shrubs, climbers, epiphytes, and ferns, se'dges and other great tusBocky herbs in this rich assemblage. Tawa (Beilschmiedia taw a) sometimes 80 foot high, but here often mingling in tho lower canopy with lokekoho (Dysoxylum spectabile) titoki (Alectryon excelsum), hinau (Elaeocarpus dentutus), ruangaeo (Litsaea calicaris), and a little tarairo (Beilschiuiedia Tarairi), has a dark trunk, pale elegant willow-like leaves, and a beautiful purple berry, smaller' than that of tanire, but as eagerly sought by the birds. The shade cast by tbese broad-leaved trees is unfav-. ourable to kauri, and perhaps because of this tawa has been able to dominate much of tho range. Smaller trees atound. Of these nikau (Rliopalostylis sapida), mamangi (Coprosma arborea), rewarewa (Knightia axcelsa), houhou (Nothopanax arboreum), neinei' : (Dracophylfurn latifolium), houhere or lacebark (Hoheria populueu), white maire (Olea janceolata) and the much smaller O. Montana, kotukutuku (Fuchsia excorticata), heketara (Olearia Rani or Cunninghamii), tawari (lxerba brexjoides), tawheowheo (Quintinia serrata), tanekaha and toatoa (Phyllocladus trichomanoides and P. glaucus respectively) give a special stamp to the forest, some being constant associates of the kauri. It is hard, among so much wealth, to single out species for special mention. The nikau, our only mainland palm, everywhere gives an almost tropical air and is perhaps the most ornamental unit of the community. In Westland it drops out and this is the southernmost limit (in the world) for a member of the palm family. The regularly scarred, slender trunk grows to a height of 25 feet or more ana the splendid latticed fronds reach a length of eight to 15 feet in sheltered places. Both the imnu.ture central bud and the tightly sheathed spadix were favourite foods of the Maori. The colour of the tiny flowers, purple or lilac, on their linger-like branchlets, and of the drupes, which are red, lends it vivid charm. Beautiful by Moonlight Mamangi, with reddish fof'jtge, is a distinctive tree coprosma, sometimes 30 feet high and 18 inches in diameter In second-growth in the Cascades Reserve and Dehinci Anawhata it can be seen in dense groves. The neinei here represents a group of most peculiar plants, the "grans trees," highly characteristic of the New Zealand flora. Iheir long, narrow, drooping leaves, purplish-brown or red when young, are congregated at tne ends of the widelyspreading branches from whose tips spring cone-like sprays of reddish fiowera. Heketara, whose blossoming comes between that of clematis and the pink, exotic-looking tawheowheo. covers the range like a powdering of snow, most beautiful of all by moonlight. It ;s certainly one of the sights of our district. Later in October come the frilled white flowers of hinau, a tall slender tree, whose seeds were made into cakes by the Maori, and then in November, after many months' development, the buds of tawari, a spreading tree of the cool heights, free their large ivory petals. Tanekaha and the rarer toatoa reJjresent the interesting genus Phylocladus in which the true leaves are scale-like while the apparent "leaves" are flattened branchlets or cladodes. Few large specimens of tanekaha remain here, as elsewhere, for the miller.

Toatoa, a sturdy low tree, changing from a glaucous to a bronzed hue with . maturity, is considered by some to be the most handsome of our taxads. Unfortunately, it is local here and it does not occur at all south of Rainbow Mountain. There is, of course, no hard and fast line to bo drawn between tho shrubs and the smaller trees. These include the bright-leaved and orange-berried coprosmas—karamu (C. robusta), one of the most sacred plants of the Maori and C. lucida; the dark (leaved) sandalwood (Mida salicifolia), putaputaweta (Carpodetus serratus), konuhu (Pittosporum tenuifolium), mairehau (Phebalium nudum), waiuatua (Rhabdothamnus Solandri), mingimingi (Leucopogon fasciculatus) with tiny red fruits, and Cyathodes acerosa with attractive white or red fruits, both Delonging to the heath family. "New Zealand Daphne" Among the most beautiful of tho shrubs are mairehau, which belongs to the citrus family, a very elegant shrub with narrow, red spotted aromatic leaves and faintly fragrant white flowers borne in dense corymbs. Equally charming is the bushy taranga, beautiful, as are all the pimeleas, with its many-flowered heads of white flowers flushed with 1 pink or orange. It has been called "New Zealand Daphne" and the resemblance to our garden daphnes is not merely superficial for the two belong to the same family. These two striking species flower just after toropapa (Alseuosmia macrophylla) ends its long season in August and September, when its bell-like, exquisitely scented flowers, varying in colour from cream to pink or wine red, hang in profusion from the sprawling branches. Waiuatua, a pretty, hairyleaved plant, distinguished by the lovely colour of its flowers—orange, streaked with red—can usually be found in flower at any season. It is very abundant in the dim rocky gorges of the Cascades Reserve. Perhaps the most distinguished cf the climbing plants is the massive kiekie (Freycinetia Banksii), which grows to an immense size in the damp gullies, ascending upon high open trees, such as pukatea (Laurelia Novae Zealandiae) and maire-tawake (Eugenia maire) or straggling in great thickets on the ground, and frequently sending out "floating roots" ringed with white cork into adjacent water. The Famous Clematis The long, narrow, yellowish-green leaves and the big, lusty habit of growth distinguished this plant from all others in the forest. Both the white or lavender fleshy bracts of the flower head and the yellowish fruit are edible. Of the aka or climbing rata, Metrosideros florida, with orange flowers, M. hypericifolia, with dainty pink and white flowers, and M. scandens are the most abundant. Perhaps the most ornamental in the Waitakere forest is the white rata (M. scandens), whose rounded dark green leaves make striking mosaics upon many trunks.

Puawhananga, the most famous clematis, which still grows abundantly throughout the area, is too well-known to need more than passing mention. Its starry male and female flowers, borne on separate vines, are to be seen at their best from August to October. Haiku (Parsonsia heterophylla) and tataramoa or bush lawyer (ltubus Australis) dangle great stem cables from ; tho roof of the forest where their white j flowers open to the sunshine. I The epiphytes, which include about ! twenty shrubby species and a number of i filmy ferns and species of asplenium, i reach into the sunshine through perching in the forks of many trees. By far the commonest in this group are the liliaceous kahakaha (Astelia Solandri), which builds up a huge yellow-green tangled mass projecting, as Captain Cook thought, like giant birds' nests, from the trunks. In the bases of their stiff, channelled leaves they 3tore rai-water and through their decay many other species are able to anchor themselves. Puka (Griselinia lucida), six to 18 feet high, with stout, ridged roots often running oO or 60 feet to the ground, various coprosmas, two species of pittosporum, and the lovely kohurangi (Senecio Kirkii) are the commonest members of these perching communities. Kohurangi, with its purplish, shapely leaves and large white scented flowers, adorns the forest in the earliest spring months. Herbs of the Forest-floor Sometimes as far as the eye can see tho giant kauri-grass, one of the most characteristic plants of kauri forest, covers the ground with enormous tufts, as much as 10 or 12 feet high. The flowering scapes and the red berries ar<? quite beautiful, but they are little known. Smaller species include the quaint hooded orchids (Pterostylus Banksii, graminea, and trullifolia), and the goblin-like species of corysanthes. Grasses are few, the commonest being bush rice grass (Microlaena avenacea) whose broad leaves and tall panicles hang gracefully over the tracks. Several species of the hooked sedges (Uncinia) are only too well-known to the bare-legged walker, while among tho other sedges the giant gahnias (Gahuia xanthocarpa) and tarangarara (G. lacera), form remarkable thickets often more than 10 feet high, topped by dark, showy panicles from which the bony nut 3 hang by delicate russet filaments after ripening. Finally, the beauty of the forest scene is wonderfully enhanced by the vast low-growing thickets of parataniwha or "native begonia," (Elatostema a plant of the nettle family, whose delicately coloured leaves, in which pink and pale green shade into one another, confer a certain splendour upon the damp ravines in which it loves to grow. Ferns and their km, of course, are rich in species and are abundant in all stations in this rain forest, but they must receive attention in a later chapter.