IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3624, 28 August 1923, Page 6

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

A SINGULAR NATIVE SHRUB. By J. Dbummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S. A spray containing a singular and handtome seed-pod has been sent by an Aponga correspondent, \\ bangarei County. The Purply black seeds are embedded in thick gluten, and lie in a pod of a showy, deep orange colour. The contrast of colours is very conspicuous. The pod has two valves or flaps. When the gluten dries the seeds become detached and fall. This takes place in the winter months, usually in June, July, or August. Mr li. M. Laing, Christchurch, has expressed an opinion that the colours probably attract birds, which eat the seeds, but no observations have been tnade in this direction. The bright green leaves of the plant are delicately veined. The plant is a slender and beautiful native shrub, with fragrant flowers, pale purple or tinged with crimson, but less conspicuous than the seeds. It is an epiphyte. That is to say, it grows on other plants, using them as supports, but not, like a parasite, sucking their juices. The Aponga correspondent found it gx-owing on an old rata, in the centx’e of a clump of Astelia, known usually as the _kie-kie, or, to use a corrupted name, the gie-gie, which is another epiphyte. It is not unusxxal to find these two epiphytes in association on a third plant in that way.

The plant with the bright 6eed-pod sometimes finds that a rock, instead of another plant, meets its needs. It never is truly terrestrial, like an ordinary plant. It belo’ "s to the family of tho matipos. Offi-

cra'iy, it is Pittosporum cornifolium. The first word, “pitch seed,” refers to the gluten in which tne seeds are buried, the second to the resemblance of the leaves to the leaves of the cornel. Maoris know the plant as piripiri and karo. Perching kohuhu is its popular name. It grows in almost all parts of the North Island: in the South Island it has been recorded only at Pelorus Sound, It is one of the New Zealand plants that have been introduced into the Old Country’s gardens. Ail the Pittosporums have handsome foliage. .Pittosporum tenuifolinm is one of the most favoured hedge-plants in New Zealand. It is commonly Known as matipo. Mr Laing states that its Maori name is tawhiwlh ; other authorities state that it is kohuhu. The Maoris’ matipo is a small tree, a member of the myrsino family, which resembles Pittosporum tenuifolium, but has reddish-brown leaves. The fashionable hedge plant is known so generally as matipo that it is useless to try to deprive it of that usurped name.

''The fantail is one of the most friendly and entertaining small birds of these parts, 5 ’ Mr H. F. Chaffey wrote from Pokaroro, near Mount Arthur, Nelson, on June 15. “Last spring, when I was working on my claim on the Takaka River, opening out a terraeo, I had lunch there every day. Two fantails decided to build their nest where I boiled the billy. There were hundreds of better places, but they chose a small branch of a broadleaf, about a yard to the right of where I always sat. On standing up, I could reach the place with my hand. All the building operations were carried out by the pied one of the pair, the female. She was much the more friendly of the two. The black one—it was a case of pied and black mating again and making a union nest, not an unusual pro-

deeding with the fantails—seemed always ! to be flying about and feeding; it paid no attention to its mate’s work. The pied one was very busy gathering cobwebs for lining, small pieces of sticks, lichen, moss, and other materials. Every time she came with something she announced her return with a little twittering song. I gave her a gentle whistle of encouragement. When the frame was finished and she began to line the inside she stepped inside and twisted herself around the nest, twittering all the time.

“Ihe job was finished in about 10 days. After the first egg was laid the black male went occasionally to have a look at them, to see if they were safe. The female laid five eggs. She immediately sat, and the male then made himself useful, relieving her every 10 or 10 minutes. I do not know how long it took to hatch the eggs, as 1 was away for some time. When I came back there were five little fantails, almost ready to fly. Three were pied and two were black. There was a fantad’s nest on the opposite side of the river. xour auuits —two pied and two black—were very busy there getting food. Soon afterwards all were on the wing, and I counted 14, equal numbers of pied and black. They stayed about there for quite a time. During the past two months a pied fantail has accompanied me along the track every morning. I go to work about two miles, and back at night. If I don’t take notice of her she flics in front of my face, and if I hold out my walking stick she sits on the end and sings her subdued song. As far as I have observed thes9 charming little birds, the pied always is a female and the black a male.”

Works published until a few years ago credited tho Canterbury Acclimatisation

Soc.ety with the first effort to introduce bees into Now Zealand. Its object was to bring about fertilisation of the red clover, which, before bees were introduced, produced seed in only very small quantities, native bees giving 1.0 help. The Canterbury Society’s first experiment was made in 1876. Early in that year Mr S. C. Farr, secretary of the society, received a note from Sir John Hall, who just had arrived at Lyttelton in the Orari, stating that he had brought a consignment of bees from Mr Frank Buekland, the English naturalist. Mr Farr went aboard at once, but when the package was opened he found that all the bees were dead. In later years the society was more successful. Mr I. Hopkins, formerly Government Apiarist in New’ Zealand, has made inquiries, which show that the first introduced bees brought to New Zealand were landed from the James, Captain M. Todd, at a mission station at Mangunga, Hokianga, as far back as March 13, 1939. They were brought by Miss Bumby, sister of the Rev. J. 'IT. Bum by, both of whom came in that vessel with a party of missionaries. The two straw hives in which the bees lived during the voyage were placed in the mission churchyard.

The late Mrs Gittos, wife of the Rev. W. Gittos, and daughter of the Rev. J. Hobbs, when a girl of eight years, was taken to see the bees As her parents went sent to another station she lost sight of the new arrivals, but not before she and her young friends, for the first time, had tasted honey in the comb, which Miss Bumby sent to them. Later on Mrs Gittos was an enthusiastic bee-keeper. Mr Hopkins states that JLady Hobson, wife of an early Governor, brought bees to New Zealand from New South Wales in 1840, and that the Rev. W. C. Cotton Drought some from England when ho came out in 1842. Mr Hopkins gives the credit

for first introducing bees to the South Island to Mrs Alloni, wife of Mr A. J. Allom, of Parnell. She sent them from England consigned to Captain Wakefield, who was in charge of the Nelson settlement. They came in the barque Clifford in May, 1842. For her successful effort the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, London, in 1845 awarded her the silver Isis medal.

A completely yellow blackbird, Eeen near Mr A. J. Symons’s residence, llailington. a Christchurch suburb, is an ornithological oddity. Partial and complete albino blackbirds are seen occasionally wherever blackbirds take up their abode in large numbers. Their abnormal colouration seldom takes a yellow form. Abnormal yellow on birds’ plumages usually displaces green. It is commonest in parrots and parrakeets. In these cases, it is believed, the yellow is a reversion to a former colour, or is a case of arrested development, caused by the absence of the green-making superstructure of the feathers affected. The abnormal replacement of another colour by yellow is known technically as zanthochroism, literally “yellow colour.” Bids in New Zealand seem to have a greater tendency towards zanthochroism than has been noted in the birds of any other country. Perhaps tho most brilliant example of the principle is the skin of a kakapo formerly in one of Sir Walter Buffer’s collections of New Zealand birds, and now in Canterbury Museum. The kakapo’s regulation dress is metallic green, varied with brown. The specimen in Canterbury Museum is a light, bright, and very beautiful yellow from the -top of its head to its tail.

Two other New Zealand parrots, the kea and the kaka, are subject to zanthochroism. A beautiful kea shot by kea-hunters at the head of the Shotover River, Otago, had a plumage of vivid orange yellow. A kaka sold to a collector many years ago for £lO 10s had a plumage generally of canary yellow, with brighter washes of yellow on the breast, shoulders, and upper surfaces of the wings. The lower part of its back, its rump, and its upper tail-coverts, by wav of sharp contrast, were bright scarlet. Some ornithologists have placed about six or eight samples of vivid kakas in a variety of their own, named the belted kaka, arid bearing, in ornithological literature, the name of prince d’Essling, of Paris. In members of that family there is faint yellow on the crown of the head. Ihe cheek feathers are wine red, the feathers over the ears orange. The most conspicuous colours are on the breast feathers, which are arterial red, with orange borders. Below them there is a bright belly-band of canaryyellow, 2jdn wide, which has _ given the variety its popular name. Sir Walter Buffer heard that a member of this interesting variety had been shot at Collingwood. He instructed his agent to buy it, but was told that the young man who shot the bird had presented the skin to his sister, who would not sell it. Following the tactics of Canon Tristram, a famous English- ornithologist, who secured a rare bird skin from a lady by giving a handsome Paris hat in exchange, Sir Walter Buffer offered an exchange of the same nature, but without success. A short time later there was a death in the young lady’s family, and Sir Walter’s agent induced her to accept a mourning costume for the gorgeous “Nestor Esslingli.”