WEATHER WISDOM.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 8, 4 December 1916, Page 4

WEATHER WISDOM.

In a recent issue oi the Lvttc.toii Times it is remarked that Canterbury people cannot but ha. e no'red thai

all the cabbage-trees are in rich flower this season. In Taranaki the

same applies, and there are many of these noble tre.es in the full glory of their flower. Our southern contemporary in its article also refers to the fact that some weather-wise people, Maori fashion, see in this, abundance of blossom, and the plentiful flowering of the flax plant, portent of a hot, dry summer, but exactly on what scientific basis they would probably lit' puzzled to explain. The Times suggests thai it may bo that an ex-j centionallv wet winter st:ch as we 1 ■ i have had is likely to he followed by a' more than ordinarily dry summer,' ami that the ti-flowering is stimulatedi by the uncommon amount, of moisture! which the ground has absorbed; but/ it, also wisely concludes that the popular diagnosis which transposes cause and effect and makes the cabbagetree and the flax responsible for the, hot summer is suggestive of -Mark; Twain's new barometer; lie never saw a barometer have less effect on the weather. "But" (the Times con-j fcinues) "what-ever the summer may, bring us, however, the fragrant, creamy-white blossom of the cabbage-,, tree—ti-palm, palm-lily, asphodel,. Cordyline Australia—is a garden and; park beauty that is moree conspicuous in' its profusion this year than for a number of seasons past. This most abundant palm of ours is said to; flower only once in three years, but, this rule is by no means invariable. The toi, Cordyline indivisa, the broadleafed cousin of the ti— it is to be] seen in its full glory in the mountain-: ous parts of the North Island—flowers 1 still more rarely; its blossoms are only seen every seven years. . . •!

No plant of ours is so thoroughly typi-j cal of New Zealand, or gives so J characteristic a touch to the face of these islands; and although the flax and the fern leaf have been adopted by some as badges emblematical of the land—the Survey Department's trade-; mark is a flax bush—the cabbage-tree,: with its unmistakable form, a link be-j tween the tropic and temperate zones, would be even more appropriate as a national emblem and tree-totem. And here the thought comes that this graceful palm of ours, which the first! inhabitants of the land planted as memorial trees for * the birth of chiefs and at whose feet often they were laid in death, could scarcely be bettered, as a green monument for the graves of our heroic dead in foreign lands. Groves of ti palms on the windy hilis of Gallipoli would mark for centpies the resting places of our gallant s men,, mark them more unmistakably than J any other plant."