IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20432, 12 June 1928, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

A SENSITIVE CLIMBER.

By J. Dkummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

An interesting present has been sent by Mr S. C. L. M'Call, Amodeo Bay, near Coromandel, who, off and on for many years, has contributed notes to this column. The present is a package of seeds of New Zealand’s only member of the melon, pumpkin, and cucumber fatnily, a rare plant in New Zealand, although represented in both the North Island and the South Island and on the Kerin adecs and otlier islands. As a matter of fact, it is more plentiful on outlying islands than on the mainland. Its range is a very wide one, its other homes being in Australia, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island, all Polynesia, and even North and South America. In the North Island of New Zealand it favours only the east coast as far south as Hawke’s Bay. Its only district in the South Island is Queen Charlotte Sound, where Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Solander gathered it many years ago. The names of most members of the family are simple household words, known wherever English is spoken, but the family itself has a somewhat formidable title the Cucurbitaceee. New Zealand’s member is known to the Maoris as mawhai. Mr M'Call gives it is official title, Sicyos angulata. The first word is Greek for cucumber. “It is very rare here now, as sheep eat it,” Mr M'Call writes. " The seeds I send are from the last plant I know of. It is a handsome creeper, with dark green leaves and long tendrils like those of a grape-vine. It climbs over small trees and scrub for 20ft or 30ft. It has small bunches of greenish flowers at intervals along the vines. Its fruit is its most disappointing feature, being a compact bunch of buns with short, sharp spines.” This climber’s tendrils are so sensitive that their tips completely encircle an object a few minutes after a tendril has touched it. The faculty to curve is communicated by the tips to the rest of the tendril, which then takes on the corkscrew form, one of Nature’s most astonishing contrivances. One part of the tendril coils from right to left, the other from left to right. This is a distinct advantage over the continuous spiral. It givgg sufficient play to avoid strain on the twisting during a strong wind. The sense of touch possessed by Sicyos to a high degree has been admired in many plants. A tendril has responded to the light touch of a piece or thread. Stamens have responded to the touch of an insect’s legs. Leaves of the sensitive plant have responded to a sudden jar. Plants have no eyes to sec with, no ears to hear with, no nervous system, no muscle cells, like animals. Yet there may be sensitiveness without sense organs and without nerve cells, and there is movement without muscle colls, as Sicyos shows. Some plants are ; rritablo. Delicate instruments have demonstrated that even a tree responds to the shade of a passing cloud, Cells found in the outer skin of leaves of shade-loving plants arc fashioned like microscopic lenses. - A botanist has not hesitated to describe these as eye-spots. Other botanists believe that their function is not perceptive, but to concentrate scanty rays of light on green cells beneath the skin. Still, plants certainly arc sensitive to outside They respond so readily, unmistakably, and surprisingly that it is not going too far to speak of plants’ senses. Part of a plant may receive a message and pass it on to another part, and the whole plant springs into activity. The rate at which the message travels is much slower than in animals, using this word for all members of the animal kingdom, not for mammals only. A message rushes from the tips of a person’s fingers to the brain in the hundredth part of a second. A wounded tendril sends its message at the rate of half an inch a second. A message that a tendril has been merely touched is sent at the rate of about one hundred and fiftieth of an inch in a second. In case some readers of this column will feel that the gourd, cultivated by the Maoris and used by them for water vessels, should be included in New Zealand’s list of members of the melon and cucumber family, it may be explained that this plant is cultivated in almost all tropical countries. It was in New Zealand when Europeans came, but ns it is believed that the Maoris brought it, with a few other plants, when they arrived in thencanoes from Polynesia, it has no place in the list of New Zealand native plants. For the same reason, the Maori dog and the Maori rat do not rank amongst the Dominion’s native animals. They stand with cattle, sheep, horses, and other domestic animals as introduced species. The gourd’s native country is uncertain. The water melon’s original home is tropical Africa. It lingers in a wild state in some old Maori cultivations, but, unlike the gourd—hue in Maori —it hardly has been naturalised in New Zealand. “Bird life around us -was slightly different last season from bird life in other years,” Mr H. F. Chaffey • writes from Asbestos Cottage, Upper Takaka, Nelson. •' Kakas and harrier hawks nested close at hand. One day a male kaka, in search of food for the young, went too near the harrier’s nesting place. Hearing cries of distress at mid-day, we ran out, and saw a harrier determinedly chasing a kaka, which dived this way and that way. making tracks for homo and for. his .mate to help him on the other side of the asbestos. We did not see what happened at the finish, as the hill obstructed our view, but I think that the kaka survived. At any rate, long afterwards, there were several kakas about, taking honey from the flax flowers, and I heard them conducting great coroberecs at their nesting place when I worked all day on the far side of the asbestos.” Later, the harrier brought two of its young, stationing them on the asbestos rocks, where they screeched all day. Mr Chaffey had a good look at one, which allowed him to go within four yards before it flew- off to the next rock. The parent bird sometimes went away to make a kill or to find a dead goat or something else, and returned to take the young to it; but in a few hours, or the following day, back they went to their old station, to resume their screeching. Wekas deserted that high part of the country. They went lower down towards the coast and Upper Takaka. Mr Chaffey was told that they were plentiful enough there. When he wrote on hay 14, they were returning to the neighbourhood in which he lives. A correspondent at Abbot’s road, Mount Eden, Auckland, wrote on May 14: —“Readers of your column will be pleased to learn that the wood-pigeon is still found in numbers close to Auckland city. About three weeks ago, I saw' a sight that must be comparatively rare in these times. In a very small miro tree in Spragg’s Bush, on the ranges,- there were at least 12 w-ood-pigeons feeding on the ripe berries. I watched them for some time at close quarters. They did not appear to be at all timid, and, at one stage, I counted five on one small branch. A small slate-coloured penguin, washed ashore on the beach near Whangarei, and sent for identification, is a blue penguin, probably the most plentiful species of pen-n-uin in New Zealand. Its New Zealand Rome extends from the North Cape to Stewart Island, and across the sea to the Chathams, and it is found in South Australia and Tasmania. It is only about half the size of the stately king penguin and roval penguin of the Macquarie Islands,' once ruthlessly destroyed by traders. The blue penguin is a cavedweller. If caves are not available, it lives in burrows, sometimes 12ft long. It. walks badly, shuffling along with the body thrown forward, and with an undulating motion. Penguins have an important part in New Zealand’s natural history. This Dominion is their headquarters. Probably it was the centre from which they dispersed themselves over the southern hemisphere. The oldest penguin known left its remains at Oainaru, in freestone that represents an ancient coral reef, in the Eocene Period, the period of the Dawn of Recent Life. With pride of race, early New Zealand colonists brought to their new land the best institutions of the Old Country. In the second and third generations of Now Zealanders, this feeling has been intensified into reverence. The same spirit has led New Zealanders make their homes as much like in the United Kingdom as possible. So well have they succeeded that overseas visitors often see in New Zealand " a, slice of Old England.” Ther first comment usually is; “How English it is.’’ The arcbitec-

tural style of the houses, the deciduous oaks arid elms and limes and silver birches, contrasting with the evergreen native plants, the cultivated shrubs and flowers, the garden designs, and the whole atmosphere are English; or Scottish, Welsh, or Irish, for that matter. For this reason, the fifth edition of Mr T. H. Mawson’s “ The Art and Craft of Gardenmaking ” is as welcome in this Dominion as it is at Home, as welcome and as helpful and inspiring to those who intend to make new homes or improve old ones. A lover of the art of making gardens, a practical Lancaster designer, a student of all literature dealing with the art, Mr Mawson points the way to everybody who has a home and a garden, from the mansion on a country seat to the artisan’s suburban cottage. The scope of this large, handsome, beautifully-illustrated book is surprising. It first takes the reader to the best kind of site, then shows where the entrances should be. and how best to make gates and fences, drives and avenues, terraces and terrace-gardens, flower gardens, beds and borders, lawns, glades, and garden walks, summer houses and bridges, rock gardens and bog gardens, kitchen gardens and orchards. There are instructions not only for private persons, but also for those who control public gardens and domains. In view of the Town Planning Act alone Mr Mawson’s book should lie consulted in this Dominion. Apa'rt from this, it is a fascinating book merely to read. It is interesting to note that amongst scores of trees and shrubs for garden and park Mr Mawson recommends three of New Zealand’s native olearias, five New Zealand veronicas, or korimikos, and the broadleai, “ a very handsome evergreen, a good plant for the seaside.” Motor cars and the requirements of a practical age have brought new ideas into force. Mr Mawson is up to date, and for basic principles he is indebted largely to Bacon’s essay. He could not do better.