HEATHER.

Evening Star, Issue 19663, 16 September 1927, Page 6

HEATHER.

The annual report of the Tongariro National Park Board has a good deal to say this year about heather. That is somewhat surprising, because when the supposed danger of a national park becoming a forest of heather was provoking the chief protests of scientists and of scientific bodies two years ago its report had nothing whatever to say about it. The report was as barren of any reference to the subject a year ago. If tho hoard has shown its discretion more than anything else in preferring to answer an attack well alter tho main brunt of it has passed, the answer which it makes now is none the less, reassuring. Tho objection to heather, despite the sentimental appeal which it has, was that a national park, which exists to show native flora, was no place for it. Tt might thrive there, as tho rabbit has thriven elsewhere in New Zealand, till it became the chief feature of the reserve, which would bo an absurdity, and ifc could not thrive to even tho smallest extent without upsetting in somo measure a natural balance. Tho board points out that the area of the park is 149,4.0 acres. Tho patches of heather arc scattered mainly on the northern side, and occupy but an infinitesimal portion of the total acreage. Most of the seed was planted before the constitution of the present guardianship. When the protests were at their height a motion was passed by the board that the heather should bo eradicated, but it was found later that this would cost too much. No attempt, or uo sustained attempt, was made, therefore, to root it up, but it was resolved that no more heather seed, nor any plants (except under domestication) not indigenous to tho park, should be introduced, and that the ling which is "rowing now should not bo allowed to spread. A committee was appointed which went over the reservation this year to mark tho boundaries of present patches of heather, so that a check may be maintained over any tendency which they may have to extend. The result of its investigations, embodied in the report, does not suggest that the heather on the park is doing any particular harm so far. So long as its growth is watched and studied it should not ho a difficult matter to keep it in check. Even the sentimental appeal of this heather at Tongariro will have small cause for continuance if the opinion is correct which has been pronounced upon it by at least one leading botanist, that it is not Scottish, but German ling.