Contributions to Natural History.

Opunake Times, Volume IV, Issue 170, 18 February 1896, Page 3

Contributions to Natural History.

[By R. Edmunds.]

Among the innumerable varieties of forms in leaf and flower that glance and gleam in the chequered light and shade of the New Zealand forest in the early days of February, none will be more striking than what at a little distance appears to be mere puffs of feathery mist—skirls of fleecy cloud, so serial you expect to see them dissolve into air again presently—winding in an ascending spiral round the stem of some dead or decaying tree. Closer inspection reveals these vaporous plumes to be the blossoms of the “White Rata” (Metrosideros scandens), the “ aka ” of the Maori, and a member of the great Myrtle family ; and the fairy-like likeness is due to the peculiar formation of the flowers in which the petals , are almost suppressed, and multitudes of thread-like stamens spurt out in a white foam in all directions; and these pencils of silky filaments, crossing and interlacing' together, produce a tracery which for grace and delicacy recalls the fantastic patterns of the gauzy muslins of the Indian loom. The leaves of this fair sycophant are small, circular, like concave disks of -dark obsidian green, so burnished that each mirrors a tiny sun in glints of scattered gold ; and the terminal leaflets being touched with a pale silvery green, these sprightly sprays, seen through the net-work of lace-like flowers, present a spectacle as elegant as it is unique. Of the fifteen known species of this genius, eleven are indigenous to these islands, while no other country of the world can boast more than one. Somewhat scarce in the North Island, M. florida is also a climber, never forming an erect tree, and failing to find any friendly* support the prostrate stem can only produce a -thicket of vines, crowned with a profusion of crimson flowers ; but if it can get aloft it can spin some noble cables —“ of perdurable toughness ” developing vines up to four or five inches in diameter. A species more common with us, M. robusta, never climbs. If the dust-like seed should reach the ground and germinate there, it grows, though but slowly, into a tree solid and erect; but if, as must often happen, the seed should lodge in the crux of some tall rimu or pukatea, where a perfect necropolis of dead and buried generations of orchids, astelias, and what not, makes a fine compost for the infant plant, it may thrive awhile in the humid air, but must soon perish—being no parasite—were it not for a singular resource : though a tenant of such airy lodgings it does not forget that it is still a child of earth, and sends down on ail sides creeping “ airroots ’’ which, when they tap the soil, below, pump up the floods of sap that swell the mighty limbs until they intergrate or “ inarch ” themselves into a sheath that surrounds the tree, as in an iron shroud. Perhaps the whole Vegetable Kingdom, in any laud, can present no grander spectacle than one of these majestic ratas in full bloom, the massy culms and bosses of the mighty structure piled up, tier upon tier, to perhaps 100 feet, and all in one blazing eruption of fiery red ; and when a strong wind sways the surging arms, they roar at you like a furious fire ; while if a bright sun shine forth all the million twinkling flowers sparkle into fireworks—aglow from trunk to summit in a tumult of tiny dancing rods and filaments of flame.