BEAUTY OF TREES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 305, 24 December 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

BEAUTY OF TREES

A WARM, congenial climate gave to the New Zealand bush the privilege of green leaves all the year round. Many shades of green provide a refreshing contrast and the shape of leaf and trend of bow have been so skilfully varied to make the bush of the Dominion second to none in the world. No better examples of the real NewZealand bush can be seen anywhere than along the Wanganui River Road. that highway leading over "Gentle Annie” and winding its way along the left bank to Pipiriki. Graceful mamaku ferns predominate in several of the bends of the river, and thj virgin bush has been left just sufliciently to remind the present generation of what the Wanganui River looked like in the heydey of its fame. To-day the desire to preserve that native foliage is very keen, keener than it has ever been, and the Wanganui River Trust Board, together with the personal interest of men like Mr. T. W. Downes, Mr. Gregor McGregor and Mr. F. H. Allen, has been responsible for maintaining the scenic reserves which punctuate the journey from the city to the upper reaches of the river. And, as if to make up for the bush that has been destroyed, a proposal has been made, not once but many times, that the bush of New Zealand, with its tendency to the darkest of greens, could be made better when in vivid contrast to the colourings of imported exotics. Some people have looked askance at the suggestion, holding that it would be .sacrilege in that it would rob the New Zealand virgin bush of its dignity. But there is something appealing about the introduction of exotic trees here and there among the darker greens of the natives, and there has been sufficient of it done in and around Wanganui to assure the scoffer and the sentimentalist that infinite beauty can be made of the sharp contrastings of the colourings .

of the foliage. Take the green willows which line the banks of the Wanganui River from the city most of the way up. In the spring of the year the bright green fringes along the waters on either side form a variation, pleasing to the eye when compared with the darker greens of native shrubs and trees on the higher levels. But the most beautiful of all the glories of Nature comes in the fall of the year, when the Lombardy poplars and the shivering aspens turn to gold. What a glorious view of golden lines of trees in the autumn can be had from the top of "Gentle Annie Hill, or, better still, looking along the Long Acre Valley, near the old Gray homestead, or from the top of Reid’s Hill, beyond Fordell—a point which opens out a view of the valley of the Wangaehu. Operiki Pa, that impregnable fortress of the ancient Maori, still holding its place on the left bank of the Wanganui River on the road to Pipiriki, boasts a fringe of aspens among the remnants of its native trees. At Pipiriki House plane trees, lime trees and an occasional walnut have been planted and have grown to healthy proportions where once nothing but

MIXTURES OF EXOTICS AND NATIVES

IN THE VALLEY OF THE WANGANUI

the mamaku, the punga, rne rimu and the rata, together with their kindred trees and shrubs of this country of the south, held dominion. The introduction of the foreign trees has not been jarring. Rather has it imparted the finishing touch. Stateliness rather than brilliant beauty, a sombre note rather than the opposite have been characteristics of the New Zealand native bush. It has been charming in its own setting, but has lacked something in brilliance. Notable exceptions, of course, are known. The vivid pohutukawa, whicn flourishes so well in the north, the occasional blaze of red from the rata, the pure whiteness of the'clematis in the spring, and the glory of the kowhai. But these bursts of brilliance are few and far between. So far as Wanganui is concerned the kowhai and the clematis are the best examples of bright colouring. Ake ake flowers and the rangiora also add a quota in what, to some people, is more or less a springtime pretence by dominantly sombre forest taking unto itself that touch of youth which many humans strive to cling to when life is ripening. The kowhai blooms well, but it comes at a season of the year when

the river !s yellow with mud-swelled waters and the ground oozing soft. The delicate white of the clematis seems to be here to-day and gone tomorrow, and when it dies and Nature paints out the gold of the kowhai and replaces it with green, the bush seems to slip back into its sombre ways again. And so the more artistic lovers of the wild have longed for a systematic mixture along the Wanganui valley of gold and red, russet and brown, sharper greens and differently moulded trunks and limbs—an artistic blending of the sombre New Zealand forest with the brilliance of chosen exotics.