MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 October 1938, Page 7

MAORI MEMORIES

BEAUTIES OF NATURE. (Recorded by J.H.S. for "Times-Age.”) It is a strangely inconsistent feature in the average man or woman that causes us to neglect the beauties of nature with which we are most familiar. How seldom we cultivate our own unique specimens of plant life, which are of so much interest to visiting nature lovers from every other country. The pua wananga is but one of many such. Worshipped by the Maori, who, seeing it for the first time when the original canoes arrived, chirstened it "The flower of our beloved Wananga.” The memorised Wananga was their code of ethics, poetry and religion known only to their ariki (high priest), who taught them its observances. It is the largest bloom of our nine, species of clematis, and has two claims for preference. Its profuse blossom is the earliest spring flower we have, and its feathery seed has silvery plumes as beautiful as its flowers, and more lasting. \ The giant blue forget-me-not, known to the Moriori people as kopakopa, is the largest of its species, and grew wild only in the Chatham Islands, whence we have adopted and claimed it for our own. New Zealand flora, rich in other shades, has no blue flowers. A proof of this is that they have no name for blue, while most other colours are named after the shades of native flowers, a strange parallel also being that no Maori has blue eyes. The maruru or Mount Cook lily is the most beautiful of all Alpine flowers. It is pure white of waxen texture with glossy cup-shaped leaves 15sinches in diameter.