Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

New Zealand Plants and their Story

New Zealand Shrubs in General

New Zealand Shrubs in General.

In all gardens where a, speciality is made of our native plants, it is not the trees which are there to be found, but rather the shrubs of the open country. Obviously, these latter are more easy to cultivate than forest plants. But this is not the sole reason: it is special beauty of form or flower that has marked them out as of peculiar merit. In any large garden in the world New Zealand shrubs would deservedly occupy a prominent place. Moreover, they belong, in many instances, to families which have no shrubby representatives in the Old World, whence all our ideas as to botanical form are derived.

The Germander speedwell is a pretty little creeping-plant of English lanes, with bright - blue flowers. It has many relatives in the Old Country, and in both hemispheres; but, with the exception of its New Zealand cousins, one other in Fuegia and a couple or so in Australia and Tasmania, all are herbs, or at best only woody in part. Nearly all the New Zealand speedwells are woody, and vary in habit from plants a few inches tall to forest-trees. Plants of the daisy family are usually herbaceous; but in a few regions, especially oceanic islands, shrubby forms occur, New Zealand being comparatively rich in such forms. Shrubby plants of the heath family are also frequent in our natural shrubberies, and some are of large size and quaint form.

The New Zealand shrubs, too, show some excellent examples of a certain remarkable phenomenon common amongst our plants, but much less frequent in other regions of similar size. This is the passing-through a juvenile form, during the development of the individual, page 51altogether distinct from the adult form, such, a juvenile form frequently persisting for a considerable period of time. Many of the forest-trees have the same curious life-history; but the whole question is briefly dealt with towards the end of this chapter.

There are distinctly two kinds of natural shrubberies in New Zealand —viz., those covering extensive areas with a monotonous, uniform garb, and those occurring mainly in belts composed of many different species of shrubs. The former may be designated "heaths," the latter "scrubs."

All over New Zealand the heaths owe their physiognomy to the dominance of the manuka (Leptospermum scoparium), a plant belonging to the myrtle family, with slender stiff stems, small leaves, and numerous white flowers. These heaths may consist almost entirely of manuka, or other shrubs may be mixed through it. In whatever part of New Zealand it may occur, manuka heath is distinctly a sign of poor land. This shrub is of most catholic tastes. Dry ground or wet, it is all one. It may be found in swamps, knee-deep in water, in sour sphagnum bogs, on wind-swept sandhills, on the faces of dry cliffs, and even on ground impregnated with "chemicals" near boiling springs and mud-volcanoes. Besides the above species, there is also the tree-manuka, L. ericoides, and a species of very limited distribution, L. Sinclairii.