IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19278, 16 September 1924, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

PLANTS ON SOUTHERN ISLANDS

(By J. Druumonu, F.L.S., F.Z.S.)

A branch of a straggling bush, sent by a resident of Mr.ngonui, North Auckland, represents a New Zealand member of the myrsino family, which mostly is tropical, but has pushed its way south to New Zealand and down to Auckland and Campbell Islands, in the Southern Ocean. This New Zealand species, Myrsine divaricata, has a surprising range of habitats. Mr T. F. Chccseman stated that it is equally at home in the moist, sheltered river valleys of the North Island, in the mountain forests of the South Island, in the sub-alpine scrub of the Southern Alps, and on the wind-swept hills of the Auckland and Campbell Islands, where it, with stunted rata and other plants, usually forms .a belt of almost impenetrable scrub. On the mainland, it is found most frequently in damp forests. It has tiny flowers, only about a twelfth of an inch in diameter.

It was collected on tho Auckland and Campbell Islands by Sir Joseph Hooker, one of the world’s greatest botanists, when he was naturalist on the Erebus, under Sir James Clark Ross, Dr Lyall, surgeon to the expedition, who served as naturalist on the Terror, and whose name is linked with the most beautiful member of New Zealand’s aline flora, and the stateliest buttercup in the world, Ranunculus Lyalli, commonly known as live Mount Cook lily, also, probably gathered tho myrsine when Ross’s vessels spent twenty days at the Aucklands and fourdays at the Campbells in summer months eighty-four years ago. The United States exploring expedition under Commodore Wilkes, and the elaborate and expensive French expedition uiider Admiral D’Urville, visited these southern islands in the same year as Ross, but it was Hooker and Lvall who made their vegetation known, 'the first volume of Hooter’s “Flora Antarctica” is confined to the plants of those two islands, and it is, and always will be, the foundation of a study of their botany. Another botanist has described it as a splendid monument of painstaking exploration and research, and has stated that it is almost incredible that the observations and material on which it is founded were made and collected in less than a month.

It is only fair to state that the French expedition did admirable botanical work on the islands. Dumont D’Urville, with the corvettes Astrolabe and the Zelee, after discovering and naming Adelie Land, in the Antarctic, and ceremoniously annexing it to France, anchored in Rendezvous Harbour, in the Auckland Islands, about eight months before Ross. Tho French vessels stayed there only nine days, but D’Urville himself, and his two naturalists, Hombron and Jacquinot, collected plants industriously. The British Government gave a grant of £2OOO for printing and illustrating Hooker’s “Flora Antarctica.” The volumes are worthy of that comparatively large sum, and of Hooker. The French Government was much more liberal. Money was spent lavishly on D’Urville’s account of his voyage. It consists of 18 octavo volumes of, letterpress and seven volumes of plates, each about 2ft long and Ift 6in broad. The arrangement and nomenclature of the plants have been criticised, but all the drawings and plates are good, and some are exquisite. D’Urville, who was killed in a railway accident two years after he returned to France, did not see the end of the work of publication, and Hombron died before he had completed the task oi editing the botanical section. In the annals of botany D’Urville’s name occupies a distinguished position as the name of the giant kelp, Durvillea antarctica, found near the coasts of New Zealand, South America, South Georgia, Kerguelen Land, the Falkland Islands, and Tahiti, but this great sea plant was dedicated to the French admiral long before he sailed into New Zealand waters. The American expedition’s botanical work at tho islands is negligible.

An incident as strange as it is regrettable, marked the French and the American voyages in those lonely seas. The commander of each expedition has given an account of it. Wilkes’s account is more detailed than D’Urville’s, and, apparently, franker. Late one afternoon, Wilkes, on the Porpoise, in 64deg 46min south latitude, saw two vessels standing northward. He believed that they belonged to the British squadron under Ross, and the Porpoise hoisted her colours, while her sailors prepared, on drawing closer, ‘to cheer the discoverer of the north magnetic pole.” When within a mile and a-half the strangers showed French colours. Wilkes then recognised them. To exchange the usual naval compliments, he tried to pass within hail under the stern of the French flagship. When he was gaining fast, and was within musket shot, he was surprised to see the French sailors boarding the main task in order to make sail. Immediately hauling down his colours, he boro up on his course before the wind. On returning to civilisation he complained of the repulse. “How could the Frencsh commander know that our brig was not in distress?” he wrote. “By refusing to allow any communication with him, he wantonly violated all proper feeling, and committed a breach of national courtesy.” D’Urville, in his explanation, stated that the Americans had been secretive all the time.

Tho Americans depended for their botanical work at the southern islands on Dr Holmes, one of their surgeons. tie does not seem to have been greatly interested in natural history, but he has given a pleasant, if nou-scientific, description of bird life in Sarah’s Bosom Harbour, in the Aucklands: “The forest was full of small birds, which were perfectly fearless. One little fellow alighted on my cap as I sat beneath a tree, and it sang loud and melodiously. Another, which was numerous, sang sweetly, its notes were varied, but approximated closely to the song of the blackbird, occasionally uttering a note or two resembling a lark’s.” He saw no other living inhabitants of the island except mice. They did not try to get out of his way, and one caught by him showed no fear. Wilkes found the birds excellent eating, especially the hawks.

A pohutukawa-—Christmas-tree to many New Zealanders—with a trunk almost 30ft In circumference is stated by Mr K. W. Dalrymplc, of Bulls, to be, probably, the largest of its species. It grows on the side of a small gully on Mayor Island, out in the Bay of Plenty, about 27 miles from Tauranga. This volcanic island of some 3000 acres is described by Mr Dalrymple as a picturesque place, with its rough, water-worn cliffs streaked with veins of obsidian and with its high, forestcovered hills surrounded by blue water. No common trees of the mainland—the red pine, white pine, totara, matai, tawa, rata, and miro—grow on the island, but pohutukawas form great groves on tho lower flats all over the island. Twisted old pohutukawas fringe a cliff about 80ft high at Opo Bay. The whau—the native cork tree —grows like a weed on the gully floors. Higher up are many wine-bernes, some of which are larger than the average wine-berry on the mainland. One of the island’s lakes, six acres in area, has a dark blood-rod hue; the other about 20 acres, is blue-black. They have no visible outlets. Wild ducks and shags find on the still waters suitable homes. Wood pigeons, tuis, kakas, and kingfishers are present. Bellbirds are there in thousands, a visiter may sit under a tree within a few feet of* 20 or 30 of them, each to chime louder than its neighbour. When evening approaches bellbirds gather at the few small springs, n<)6stly near the tops of ridges, and there ’ give concerts that Mr Dalrymple does not try to describe. An equally pleasant experience fell to the lot of Mr W. M. Fraser, engineer of the Whangarei Harbour Board, when he visited the Poor Knights, which lie off the coast of Whangarei County. He found the bush simply alive with bellbirds, “which' sing continuously from daybreak to dusk.”