FOREST BOTANY

Southland Times, Issue 19290, 8 July 1924, Page 6

FOREST BOTANY

CLASS OF INSTRUCTION. The first meeting of a class in “Forest Botany” under the tutorship of Mr C. M. Smith, of the Forestry Department, was held on Saturday evening last at the Technical College. Twenty four members were present. Councillor H. J. Farrant, who acted as Chairman for the evening, explained that the class would consist of about one hour’s lecture and one hour’s discussion. x. The lecturer cbmmenced by advising all members of the class to become familiar with Dr Cockayne's book “New Zealand Plants and Their Story;” unfortunately,. practically no other helpful book on native vegetation could be bought, but, within six months, the second edition of Cheeseman’s “Flora” should be published. Mr Smith proposed to deal with introduced as well at native plants, pointing out that the majority of New Zealanders see far more exotics than native trees. He proposed in his lectures to concern himself only with flowering plants, although this involved excluding all those organism which produce plant diseases, and many plants, such as ferns and mosses, which from important constituents of the bush. In his first lecture he was sorry to have to bore his hearers with a number of elementary facts and common names descriptive of roots, leaves and buds, but he would use the minimum number of technical terms, assuring that that in any “Flora” worthy of the name, they would find all difficult terms clearly explained. In talking of roots, he instanced the taprooted pines which were bound to remain stunted on soils underneath which a hard pan existed, while spruces found ample rom for their spreading root system. The pink outgrowths sometimes visible on the stems of manuka were not true roots, but were possibly due to disease. Some people imagined that the twisted portions of white pine roots sometimes seen above the ground in the damp situations where this tree commonly grows, had some special function, but they were probably due, in most cases, to obstacles which had since rotted away. Speaking of varieties of leaf structure , the lecturer instanced the flattened branch found in the celery pine which produced its fruit on the end of what was apparently a leaf, and so revealed its true function of a shoot. This discussion at the close of the class showed that those present had found the leeure very stimulating. Among other questions it was asked whether there was anv connection between straight roots and straight-grained timber. In the lecturers opinion there was none, although belief to the contrary is commonly held by splitters of posts. It was also asked whether the extreme variation in leaf-shape shown by a number of New Zealand plants, such as the pokaka, had any significance in regard to the supposed previous development of the plant. According to the lecturer, this theory was not at all widely held. Next week, Mr Smith will complete his desediption of the types of flower-heads found in plants, and will deal with pine trees and in this connection he asked members of the class to provide him with as many different specimens of pine cones and shoots as they wished him to refer to in his summary of the pine family.