The mighty trunks and monster limbs of the trees about you are covered with huge masses of moss, shrouded in climbing ivy-ferns, festooned with flowering creepers, and covered with natural hanging gardens to their lofty summits. Around you are the varied forms and colours of more than a hundred different shrubs and trees, evergreen, and flower-bearing in their seasons. There is the cabbage-tree palm, with bare shank and top-knot; the nikau palm, with weird and wondrous frondage; the lancewood, upright and slender, with crest of copper-tinted hair-like leaves; the fern-tree, a vast umbrella of emerald green. There is the twisting squirming rata; the gaunt and powerful kahikatea; the golden kowhai; the dark velvet-covered rimu; the feathery red tawai; the perfumy mangiao; and more that it would take days to particularize. Flowers of bright tint load the trees or shrubs that bear them—scarlet, white, crimson, orange, yellow, blue; and hanging creepers shower festooned cataracts of foliage and blossom down from middle air. And everywhere are ferns, ferns, ferns! abundant, luxuriant, and of endless variety.
You stroll in perfect safety through this gorgeous temple of nature. There is nothing harmful, nothing to fear in all our paradisaic wilderness. No snake, no scorpion, no panther; no danger from beast, or bird, or reptile, or hostile man; nothing to cause the apprehension of the timidest lady. Only a pig, maybe, rushing frantically off in terror at your approach; only a mosquito, sometimes, to remind you you are mortal.
Our Brighter Britain is the natural home of the poet and the artist. Not the least doubt about that. We shall develop great ones some day here. Even the Maori, originally a bloodthirsty and ferocious savage, is deeply imbued with the poetry of the woods. His commonest phraseology shows it. "The month when the pohutukawa flowers;" "the season when the kowhai is in bloom;" so he punctuates time. And the years that are gone he softly names "dead leaves!"
There are over a hundred distinct species of trees indigenous to this country, and goodness knows how many shrubs and other plants. Sir J. D. Hooker has classified our flora, though doubtless not without omissions. We, the inhabitants of our shanty, are trying to study the natural history of our adopted home. What we have learnt of it—not much, perhaps, yet more than many settlers seem to care to know—we place in our note-book, which I now set forth for all and sundry to criticize.
The Kauri (Dammara Australis) is the king of the forest, and must have foremost place. It has already been described fully, in the chapter on our special products, in which I also spoke of kauri-gum, the Kapia of the natives.
The Kahikatea, "white pine" (Podocarpus dacrydioides), comes next in order. It attains a hundred and twenty feet or so of stick, and may girth nearly forty feet. It has not much foliage, but rejoices in great, gaunt limbs. Kahikatea bush often occupies marshy ground, and, if unmixed, has a somewhat bare and spectral aspect. The timber is good, but soft, and may be used for deals.
The Totara (Podocarpus Totara) attains as great a size. It yields a timber highly prized where kauri cannot be got. The wood is close-grained, and reckoned very valuable. Mottled totara is as much esteemed for cabinet work as mottled kauri.
The Rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) is a beautiful species of cypress; "Black Pine," as bushmen call it. It yields a highly valued timber, used for furniture and interior work. The tree is often as gigantic as the kahikatea, but is stately and finely foliaged.
The Tawai (Fagus Menziesii), called "red birch" by settlers, is a favourite for fencing when young. It attains a hundred feet; and yields a good strong timber.