TUSSOCK GROWTH IN CENTRAL OTAGO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24422, 7 October 1940, Page 11

TUSSOCK GROWTH IN CENTRAL OTAGO

TO THE EDITOR Sir—ln the Daily Times of October 4 Dr F. W. Hilgendorf is quoted as having stated that in the early days cattle were often lost in the tussocks about Alexandra. This is not quite correct. The native tussocks, of three kinds, never grew more than about three feet high. But in the rich bottom lands about Alexandra flax and toitoi grew high enough to hide cattle. The late Mr William Brash, of Saddle Hill, told me that once he and a companion camped there for a night with a team of bullocks and a dray, and they lost one of the bullocks in this flax and toitoi, and did not get him till the return journey. It is quite true, as Dr Hilgendorf says, that the tussocks on the hillsides are now so much eaten down that a mouse could not hide in them. In the early days pastoralists had a mania for burning, and it was an art to light a grass fire while on horseback. The match would be struck and thrown into a tussock before the head went out, and (he burnt grass would grow up in the spring and afford a fine green bite. But this was a destructive process. The present scrubby tussock, as Dr Hilgendorf decribes them, respond well to irrigation.—l am. etc..

Richard Norman, Lawrence, October 4.