DANGER TO BUSH.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 956, 28 December 1933, Page 9

DANGER TO BUSH.

Wild Flowers Collected and Sold in Cities. especial to the “Star."’) SYDNEY, December 22. Last week a man who gave his occupation as “ drover ” was called as witness in a case at Gosford—fifty miles from Sydney, on the Hawkesbury—and he asked £1 a day for his expenses. In reply to questions, he told the Court that he was making £2 to £2 10s a day picking Christmas bells. He had a contract to supply 80,000 blooms to the Sydney and Melbourne markets, and he stated that he could gather 2000 blooms—for which he got 22s per thousand—in one day off a patch no bigger than the courtroom. The magistrate allowed him £1 per day, remarkjps that the returns from this business should be good news for unemployed men.” L nfortunatelv, there is only too much reason to believe that large numbers u P eo P^ e are working hard throughout the spring and summer denuding the surviving tracts of bush land of their wonderfully beautiful flora. At Lily- ' a^e » south of National Park, not long ago a ranger stopped a man who was carrying in a bag a number of rock lilies and waratahs and five huge bunches of “ native rose ” —one of the many “glories of the bush.” Of course, the flowers were confiscated, but that would not make them bloom again. Theoretically it is an offence to pluck wild flowers even on private land without the consent of the owner, and on all Crown lands and public reserves they are, of course, “ tapu.” Yet at a recent conference of the Rangers’ League it was stated, as a known fact, that men and women are making in some cases as much as £4O a week by “ collecting ” wild flowers, and that these are sold in our streets and markets with impunity. If something effective is not done to stop these nefarious practices, the Australian bush flora—one of the most beautiful of all our national heritages —will speedily become nothing but “ a memory of the past.”