FOREST TREES

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1929, Page 18 (Supplement)

FOREST TREES

THE RATA FAMILY BEAUTIFUL FLOWERING PLANTS. TREES OF ECONOMIC VALUE.

(By

E. Maxwell.)

s Ratas and their relations include some y of our most beautiful and conspicuous flowering plants. They range from one of our grandest forest giants down to shrubs and creepers. They belong to a vary large family—the myrtaceae — v which consists of eighty genera and upwards of two thousand species. The 0 family is much more, strongly representf cd in the Southern Hemisphere than in 2 the Northern, and far the greater 3 number of all the important timber trees of Australia —such as the eucalypts (gums), syncarpias (turpentines), tristanias (boxes), and angophoras (apple 1 trees) —belong to it. ■ In New Zealand the family is repre- ; sented * by the genera metrosideros (ratas and pohutakawas) 11 species; ’ the leptospermums (manukas or tea - trees), 3 species; myrtus (ramarama 1 and rohutuo), 4 species; and eugenia - (mairetawake), 1 speeies. The family embraces many trees and plants of ini.portant economic value, some producing 1 spices, fruits, nuts, oils, barks, timbers, ■ and fuel. As also is the case with the Australian representatives, all of those in New Zealand, except the creepers, produce timber of great strength and high quality and excellent fuel. In dealing with this family the remarkable severance between Australia and New Zealand in plant life, or perhaps it would be better expressed by saying the botanic isolation of New Zealand, is emphasised, for there is a complete absence from New Zealand of any representatives whatever of any of the important Australian genera above-mentioned, although at some time long past there were representatives of the eucalypti in New Zealand, and of the nineteen speeies of the myrtaceae family in New Zealand seventeen are absolutely confined to this country. The two exceptions are the Kermadec pohutukawa and the common tea tree or manuka. Of the New Zealand representatives of the family the ratas (metrosideros genus) are far the most important. 'They include the grandest and most remarkable of our trees and the most conspicuous and most brilliant flowering of our native trees, shrubs, and creepers. MOST REMARKABLE TREE. First comes the giant rata (metrosideros robusta), certainly the most remarkable tree in New Zealand. Though not approaching the kauri in extreme height, and insignificant compared to it in timber producing, still is proportions are gigantic. In total height it reaches well over 100 feet, with a trunk, though hollow and uneven, reaching over 20 feet in diameter, and limbs of a size and reach exceeding that (with one single individual exception) of any other New Zealand tree. With all its trunk, its giant and often almost horizontal limbs, and all its smaller branches festooned end crowded with innumerable creepers, ferns, and epiphytical plants of all sorts—even in size up to /small trees with stems or roots a foot and over in diameter—altogether it makes a marvellous sight- of wonderful beauty and lavish luxuriance of growth, one tree .alone affording a greater field of botanical wealth than thousands of « acres of forest would in some countries.

The enormous spreading heads, so covered as if in one mass with a profusion of dark scarlet flowers, invariably reared far above the surrounding trees, made in midsummer, and after, a most remarkable feature of many of our forests. The rata is very widely spread throughout nearly all our mixed forests over the North Island and in Nelson and Marlborough. In the early days when the' forest eame right down to the then small town of Wellington and to the Hutt Road the ratas were a great feature of all the i hills to the westward right over to ' Cook Strait, but were almost entirely absent from the hills eastward of the harbour and the Hutt Valley. It would seem as if this tree readied its highest' ' perfection and greatest numbers in Taranaki. At one time there were thousands of acres of coastal plains covered with forest composed of little else than giant ratas, and to this day great numbers and some of the finest specimens are to be found at the base and on the elopes of Mount Egmont, and on the Poukaj and Kaitake ranges.

GIANT OF THEM ALL. In 1882 there was standing about three miles inland of Opunake, right on the track of the present Opunake-Eitham Road, what one would think must have been the giant of them all. ‘lt had an immense hollow trunk, which rose with little decrease in size to a great height. The space inside the hollow trunk, so great was it, was sufficient to permit of a central campfire with some fifteen men sleeping around it, arranged like the spokes of a wheel, feet to the fire, heads to the wall. Later it provided a roomy stable for a horse. I have now a photo of a rata I knew well, which in 1890 stood astride of the Warea read, north of Cape Egmont. It was a very high tree with a great spread of trunk in the lower part, but much less above. The photograph depicts passing through the trunk a large dray, in which are three horses abreast, one man walking beside and two standing up in the dray. The rata, in addition to its grandeur and beauty, is one of the most interesting of our forest trees because of its peculiarity of growth, about which there has. been and is still a great deal of misconception. Many of the earlier writers about New- Zealand described it as a tree which, starting life as a slender creeper, clinging to the trunk of large forest trees, in time grew to such size "and strength that it crushed, by its powerful embrace, the life out of its host, and ultimately itself became a giant tree of the forest. This tale was the result of confusion between two very distinct species of the metrosideros," namely, m . robusta and m. florida. The latter is the well-known beautiful orange-scarlet flowering creeper that ■so greatly brightens and beautifies onr forests and forest margins for the greater part of the year. This plant, though often climbing to the tops of almost the highest trees, is at all stages a creeper with very supple vines, the thickest of which can be bent with ease. It is commonly called climbing rata, but the Maori# distinguish it, at least in some parts, by the' name. “Aka.” On

the other hand, rata (m. robusta) is at all times distinctly a rigid plant; even in its earliest youth it is not in the least suggestive of a creeper. It generally starts life in the debris collected in forks of large limbs and trunks or in other places up—sometimes high up—on large forest trees. In time, from thia perch it sends -down strong roots to the ground. These descending roots throw out lateral ones with which to elasp the trunk, the large roots expanding around the trunk until they coalesce, forming what becomes a great hollow trunk when that of the original tree inside decays. The length of this false or root-trunk, of course, depends upon how high np the rata plant'first started life—it may be n great length—and from this joint upwards rises the true

tree trunk, great limbs and branches. This epiphytical habit and the long descending roots were doubtless the cause of the confusion of this species with the eliming “Aka.” The timber of the rata is hard, and of great strength, hut has been mostly neglected, though it should have, been the source of much wealth, as it is a most valuable timber for many .purposes. Immense quantities, standing or felled, have been destroyed by fire a very small percentage being used as firewood.

In some parts there were considerable stands of what would appear to be a different variety, which grows direct from the ground with long, clean, straight trunks, and without the exeessjve .widespread root® that are so dis.1 J ??nt? tn*/.

tinctive of the ordinary form, whether it has started as an epiphyte or started from the ground. The wood of. this terrestrial variety is markedly different from that of the other, being much lighter in colour, but with bluish tint instead of red toward* the centre, and it is stronger. There used to be a, fine stand of this tree some miles ap 'the Stony river in Taranaki.