NATIVE FLORA CLUB

Chronicle (Levin), 25 October 1946, Page 4

NATIVE FLORA CLUB

OUTING TO OHAU BUSH Recentiy twelve members of the Native . Flora Club spent a short afternoon in sonio Ohau bush. There was plenty of time, however, to make a thorough investigation of a small but particularly interesting area. This patch of bush on a stony flat not far from the Ohau River has beep found to contain over seventy- different species of plants, includipg ferns,. and some of jfcfiese'; plants are. not known to occuF elsewhere in this distrfct. The larger trees are mainly totara, under which there is a tough, low scrub of about a dozen different species, though at first glance they all look very much alike. Notable in this under scrub are Melicytus micranthus, a small-leafed relative of the mahoe, though very unlike it, and Nothopanax anomalum, a tough and intqrlacing shrub related to the five-finger, and very unlike that too. Three small Coprosmas, four species of myrtle, the small-leafed milk-tree and Melicope simplex add to the colleetion, and as half of these have confusing juvenile forms, and there are some hybrids, the scrub as a whole presents plenty of material for examination. Another point specially noticed was the prevalence of plants having the male (staminate) fiowers and the female (pistillate) fiowers borne on separate plants, An interesting example of this is the totara. With catkins on the male trees and a few of last season's fruits op the female trees, they were easily eompared, and it was noticed that the male trees had light broiize leaves on. loosely spreading branchlets, whereas the female trees had dark green leaves and were of more compact growth. No doubt birds would learn to distinguish between the darker, compact form of the fruiting trees and the graceful bronze of the trees which bear only catkins; and wind, which is the agent for distributing the pollen. can more easily sway TKe"" laxe'rgrowing branchlets of the catkinbearing trees. Other interesting trees were the Plagianthus betulinus (ribbon wood) a deciduous "cousin"- of the lacebarks (hoherias) . Unlike the ■ latter, which bear conspieuous ; white fiowers, the ribbonwood has ; very small fiowers. A compensating . factor is that so many are grouped together in each of the large and numerons clusters, that the i.

flowering male ribbonwood appears to have a greenish-cream cloud caught up in its branches. The male fiowers are each about an eighth of an inch across', with strap-shaped cream petals, and the stamens grouped together in the centre like a paint brush, typical of the mallow and hollyhock family to which these ribhonwoods belong. The female fiowers are extremely tiny — even under a pocket lens their petals are barely visible— and the cluster hangs loosely below the leaves, looking in the distance like very much undeveloped buds, rather than a cluster of mature fiowers. In the shelter of parts. of the bush there is a carpet of irreguiarly -kidney-shaped leaves belonging to dozens of spider orchids (Corysanthes triloba ) . Each plant " has but one leaf, and some also have a solitary purplish-red flower, quote strong'ly resembling the fat body of a spider, with the narrowly-elongated sepals and petals to represent the legs.