IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19816, 15 June 1926, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

THE FINGER-FLOWER. BT J DEDMMOXD. P US.. P.Z.S. From a plateau near Opepe, 2300 feet above sea-locvl, the laud descends gradually towards Lake Taupo, iu a series of deep canal-like valleys, which run towards the lake like the spokes of a wheel. Each valley, in its upper part, is a glen. Shrubs grow thickly on the banks, amongst ferns and lycopods. Mr H. Hill, of Napier, who has wandered amongst many fascinating paths in New Zealand plant and animal life, making notes and discoveries, recently visited one of those glens. He, with the late Mr A. Hamilton, Director of the Dominion Museum, had previously spent many a pleasant hour there collecting plants. He was accompanied on his latest visit by Tamati te Kurapae, chief of the Ngati'i'uwharotoa, who knows that bush country well. Before they reached the glen rain drove them from the bush, and they sought shelter in u camp of Maori rabbiters. There they were supplied with information about the vegetable caterpillar, insect at one stage of its life, and vegetable at another.

Pushing on into the glen with several Maoris, Mr Hill noticed a strong perfume. He attributed this at first to the moist air, but it became stronger as he went down. Although the place was familiar to him, and although the object of his visit was a remarkable and somewhat rare plant-parasite known to botanists as Dactylauthus—the finger-flower-—he was amazed to had that the floor of the glen was a veritable garden-meadow of the plant he sought. Opening out, along the dry floor, for a chain or more, he saw hundreds of its flowers, the petals varying from light purple to dull purple, the sepals streaked with faint purple. It was in the middle of March. Some of the plants were in bud, some were halfopen, and some were in full bloom, each bloom 1 Sin across, the whole making a picture absolutely new to him, and to his Maori companions. All were lost in pleasure and admiration at the sight. The perfume, which reminded Mr Hill of the first time he saw Dactylanthus at Malarau, near East Cape, mot e than 25 years ago, was almost over-powering.

The beauty of Dactylauthus, like proverbial beauty, is only skin deep, lhat plant’s interest, to botanists at least, lies in the fact that it is a parasite on the roots of other plants. Little is known of its life-bistory, because few botanists have studied it in its natural habitat. As Mr Hill states, parasitism iu the plant and animal kingdoms oilers many attractive lines of study. Plant parasites lured him many times to Taupo and to the inland bush country near Opepo. Until ho made tho notable trip he now describes, he had been unable to go there except in early spring, mid-summer, and mid-winter, when Dactylauthus is not in bloom. Every time he went to Taupo he visited Opepo, hoping to find something new and rare connected with parasitism. On previous visits be usually found Dactylanthus’s female flowers —with pistils —but not staminate, or male, flowers. There was evidence, then, however, that the staminate flowers had bloomed.

Clumps of the flowers, with the rhizomes —the prostrate or underground stems from which the roots spring—and with the host plants the parasite had attacked, were carefully dug up by Mr Hill, and packed for removal as specimens. In that place, the roots most frequently attacked by Dactylanthus belong to the Pittosporum, of which the matipo, used largely for hedges, is a member, and to the Aralia. Mr Hill found no signs that a host plant suffer" from the parasite’s attack. Tiny rhizomes had attached themselves to the sides of roots, but a rhizome, when fully grown, always is at the terminal end of the root. Rhizomes with male flowers are buried several inches in the ground, and may be an inch or more thick. Most of these rhizomes, when dug up, had shoots which grew in bundles, not unlike bundles of asparagus. These, apparently, do not reach maturity. Rhizomes that carry female flowers are much smaller and flatter than the other rhizomes, and are not buried in the ground; and over their whole surface there arc warty shoots. A rhizome, when fresh, may be separated from its host-plant by using boiling water. Usually, an individual Dactylanthus has only male or only female flowers, but Mr T. F. Cheeseman examined several on which the upper flowers were all male, and the lower flowers were all female. In staminate flowers the anthers, which contain the pollen, are very numerous. Mr Hill states that the anthers split lengthwise, and are full of pollen, which, under the microscope, resembles resin-hke material in the warty shoots of a rhizome. The fruit is a hard, dry nut.

Maoris in whose whare Mr Hill sheltered from the rain know Dactylanthus as waewae-te-atua. This has been translated as the fingers, foot, or toes of a spirit. In text books the Maori name of the parasite is given as pua-te-reinga, “the flower of Hades,” but Taupo Maoris use that name for another plant. Botanically the parasite is Dactylanthus Taylori, bearing the name of the Rev. R. Tavlor, an early missionary and author of “Te-Ika-a-Maui,” a book known to all New Zealand bibliophiles. The parasite was made known to science about 80 years ago. It has been reported from only the North Island, in parts of which it is fairly abundant, but it belongs to a notorious group of X'oot parasites, mostly tropical. It is inconspicuous except in its flowering season, from February to April. It grows mostly in forest districts, far from human habitation. Its range of altitude is from sea level to 3500 ft. Its habitat is from near the sea coast to far inland, as in the fairy dell in which it delighted Mr Hill. In previous quests he was able to discover the parasite by its “ delicious daphne-like fragrance”; Mr Taylor found the strong smell “earthy and unpleasant”; to another observer the smell seemed to be 1 iRe the smell of a ripe melon; Mr Cheeseman found that the fragrance was decidedly pleasant when the flowers expanded, but became heavy and disagreeable when they began to decay.

In former geological ages there was a continent somewhere outside the area now occupied by New Zealand. There is disagreement as to the actual position of the lost continent. Some geologists suggest that it was to the north and east of North Auckland. The area that now forms New Zealand was near the shore line of the continent. Large rivers that flowed along the continent carried to the N.w Zealand area large quantities of materials, which accumulated to a groat thickness. Earth movements caused the old continent to founder, but a nexv land emerged from the floor of the ocean. Periods of uplift and of depression were experienced, and at the close of the Miocene Period, one of the most important periods in the world’s history, North Auckland was raised above the sea-levcl, probably with an outline somewhat similar to its present one.

The geological history of that peninsula is sketched on those lines in a recent bulletin published by the New Zealand Geological Survey. It is mainly the work of Mir H. T. Ferrar, who is a member of the survey staff, and who was geologist in Captain Scott’s first expedition to the Antarctic. The bulletin describes an area of 109 a square miles in North Auckland, mainly in the Whangarei and Bay of Islands counties. The object was largely utilitarian, particularly to determine the boundaries of known coal-bearing areas and places that might hold bidden coal bods, also to investigate clays and earths and note the occurrence of minerals. This gives the bulletin a practical value, but it has value of a different nature on account of the discussion in it of very interesting theories and generalisations. This work, with its 135 pages and many lilans and illustrations, is an important addition to a splendid series of bulletins issued by the Now Zealand Geological Survey. They now form a geological library of no means dimensions, and of high value in applied and pure science.