Thomas Cheeseman's botanical 'great day out' on Great Island

Forest and Bird, Issue 295, 1 February 2000, Page 30

Thomas Cheeseman's botanical 'great day out' on Great Island

Ter Cheeseman visited Island in the Three Kings group just before the introduction of goats in 1889. An enthusiastic botanist, and then curator of the Auckland Museum, he foresaw the potential of these islands, in their far northern location, as a biological ‘treasure trove’. Cheeseman describes the Goverment ship Stella steaming slowly alongside black, rugged, perpendicular cliffs, with surf dashing far up the rock and breaking with a deep hollow roar into huge caves. Unperturbed, he landed on a rough bouldery beach which was encumbered with masses of fallen rock. His excitement can be imagined as he found one new species after another in the deep gullies of Great Island. There was a fern of the genus Davallia known, till then, only from Australia; also a new species of Coprosma much like karamu but with giant leaves and berries. A highlight of Cheeseman’s trip must have been what he descibed as the ‘extraordinary and inexplicable’ occurrence of a Paratrophis the form of which he recognised from Fiji, Tahiti and the Philippines: it is now described as a distinct New Zealand species of milkwood and named Streblus smithii). His naming of the new Pittosporum fairchildi was the botanist’s tribute to Captain Fairchild, the ship’s captain who had set him ashore that day. In all, Cheeseman put together a list of 82 plants during a three-hour visit. Among them he encountered and recorded many of the 14 or so plants now recognised as peculiar to the Islands. Sadly, by the time the goats were removed in 1946, many of the plants he recorded were no longer present, and others were restricted to the few places the goats could not reach.