Flaming Furze...

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 158, 24 September 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

Flaming Furze. ..

/TgJJTJjgTY'EEING the mass of golden kKy'M'yw blossom on the furze for (SSftßySffiv the first time on Putney Heath, Linnaeus, the famous Swedish botanjg ist of the eighteenth century, went down on his knees and praised God for having created a plant of such wondrous beauty. In his native Sweden there was no gorse; not so long ago there was none in New Zealand. Those days are gone forever and, at the present time, the gorse is in bloom in the waste spaces of town and country. With the warmer days of summer there will be a great crackling as the ripe seed pods burst and scatter their contents over a still wider area. How it would delight the heart of Linnaeus! Here in Auckland there are few botanists of that temperament; the gorse is an invader against whom every man’s hand is turned and its wondrous beauty is lost sight of in the contest with its spreading roots and millions of hardy seeds. If there is now no furze at Putney, Auckland has it in plenty. It has found a resting-place on the vacant land dotted all over the: suburbs and all along the northern railway line it is conspicuous—painfully conspicuous to the industrious landowner. In the Morningside Reserve —that great terra incognita in the heart of Mount Albert Borough—gorse is king. It has covered the slopes below Western Springs Road -with a golden carpet, making a vivid patch of colour in a landscape of closely-built houses. Here it has lived long and prosperously, safe in the knowTedge that “this progressive borough,” to quote a Mayoral phrase, has no money with which to eject the old intruder. From time to time disgruntled ratepayers have cast malicious eyes at its sea of blossoms, but still it flourishes. It can well afford to laugh, if plants can laugh, at the helplessness of men, or at least of ratepayers.

“How beautiful the gorse looks, say the passers by as they ? 2 through the tram windows at . vs bright golden patches. To the laow less it is a thing of beauty, but - all looks yellow to the ja ind:ced ej of the property owner, who sees it only hours of patient gnibbirg an enemy for whom there can be quarter. So he saddens it the of Morningside hillside and das ions of improvements —terraces i hundred thousand football *°’ o,re st j]i wonderful improvements. But the golden furze flourishes. Below the Kingsland fire.stlDd®* gorse has taken possession cl bank above the railway due a of no man's land. It has rac- .. the hill to border the concrete way, hoping, perhaps, that sum ■ naeus may pass that way. u , bare slopes between Grey “ yl “fi-ei Kingsland it is ablaze and aas 1 the waste land in the va ." ey , rt jif with its golden glory. Al ? ' <j. suburbs it proclaims from *“ ha -,-; sides the fact that local hotu no funds for street improvem Improvements! Oh, 7™-, 013 e be a great improvement if rfDe -p were grubbed up, says the PJ onwer. The landless c * tlzl l. n CT . o mi-’ grudge the gorse its plot of rnija . perhaps not even the wo*. side Reserve. Of a like l ’? mo uw’» Burns, who admitted the non* claim to an ear of corn, northough pointing out: os y “I doubt na, whvles, hut thieve.” . onP For gorse grows with irai u j,„ws in the field of the slothful. by its golden carpet how m in town and country is *- >1! -be! cause people have more can look after. Satan - weeds for idle lands. As for the botanist wh ° the golden gorse to New Zt & the sponsors of the bteck aire^ rabbit, his memory will re