But the most famous rata is neither the vine nor the tree of the south. It is the tree-killing tree of the North Island, the species named robusta. Its flowers are richer than the southerner’s, and whereas the latter is not often more than fifty feet high, robusta is sometimes twice as tall as that. And it is as strong as tall, for its hard, heavy logs of reddish wood will lie on the ground year after year without decaying. But its fame comes from its extraordinary fashion of growing. Strong and erect as it is, and able to grow from the ground in the ordinary way, it prefers to begin life as an epiphyte, springing from seed dropped in a fork or hollow of a high tree. At any rate the tallest and finest specimens begin as seedlings in these airy nests. Thence without delay they send down roots to earth, one perhaps on one side of the tree trunk, one on the other. These in their turn, after fixing themselves in the ground, send out cross-roots to clasp each other—transverse pieces looking like the rungs of a rope-ladder. In time oblique rootlets make with these a complete net-work. Gradually all meet and solidify, forming a hollow pipe of living wood. This encloses the unhappy tree and in the end presses it to death. Many and many a grey perished stick has been found in the interior of the triumphant destroyer. In one tree only does the constrictor meet more than its match. In the puriri it finds a growth harder and stouter than itself. Iron is met by steel. The grey smooth trunk goes on expanding, indifferent to the rata’s grasp, and even forcing its gripping roots apart; and the pleasant green of the puriri’s leaves shows freshly among the darker foliage of the strangler.
The rata itself, on gaining size and height, does not escape the responsibilities of arboreal life. Its own forks and hollows form starting-points for the growth of another handsome tree-inhabitant, the large or shining broadleaf. Beginning sometimes thirty feet from the ground, this last will grow as much as thirty feet higher, and develop a stem fourteen inches thick. Not satisfied with sending down roots outside the trunk of its supporter it will use the interior of a hollow tree as a channel through which to reach earth. The foliage which the broadleaf puts forth quite eclipses the leaves of most of the trees upon which it rides, but it does not seem to kill these last, if it kills them at all, as quickly as the iron-hearted rata.
NIKAU PALMS
Our wild flowers, say the naturalists, show few brilliant hues. Our fuschias are poor, our violets white, our gentians pallid—save those of the Auckland isles. Our clematis is white or creamy, and our passion-flower faint yellow and green. Again and again we are told that our flowers, numerous as they are, seldom light up the sombre greens of the forest. This complaint may be pushed much too far. It is true that pale flowers are found in the islands belonging to families which in other countries have brightly coloured members. Though, for instance, three or four of our orchids are beautiful, and one falls in a cascade of sweet-scented blooms, most of the species are disappointing. But the array of our more brilliant flowers is very far from contemptible. Over and above the gorgeous ratas and their spray-sprinkled cousins are to be reckoned the golden-and-russet kowhai, the crimson parrot’s-beak, veronicas wine-hued or purple, the red mistletoe, the yellow tarata, and the rosy variety of the manuka. The stalks of the flax-lily make a brave show of red and yellow. The centre of the mountain-lily’s cup is shining gold. And when speaking of colour we may fairly take count of the golden glint or pinkish tinge of the toé-toé plumes, the lilac hue of the palm-flower, the orange-coloured fruit of the karaka, and the purples of the tutu and wineberry. Nor do flowers lack beauty because they are white,—witness the ribbon-wood loaded with masses of blooms, fine as those of the double cherry, and honey-scented to boot; witness the tawari, the hinau, the rangiora, the daisy-tree, the whau, and half a score more. For myself, I would not change the purity of our starry clematis for the most splendid parasite of the Tropics. Certainly the pallid-greenish and chocolate hues of some of our flowers are strange; they seem tinged with moonlight and meant for the night hours, and in the dusky jungle carry away one’s thoughts to “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “Les Fleurs du Mal.”
For a bit of New Zealand colour you may turn to Colenso’s description of a certain morning in early October when he found himself on a high hill-top in face of Mount Ruapehu. Snow had fallen in the night and the volcano was mantled heavily therewith. The forest and native village on the hill on which Colenso stood were sprinkled with white, and, though the rising sun was shining brightly, a few big flakes continued to flutter down. Outside the village a grove of kowhai was covered with golden-and-russet blossoms, all the more noticeable because the young leaves were only on the way. Suddenly from the evergreen forest a flock of kakas descended on the kowhais, chattering hoarsely. The great parrots, walking out on the underside of the boughs to the very end of the branches, began to tear open the flowers, piercing them at the side of their base and licking out the honey with their brush-tipped tongues. Brown-skinned Maori boys climbing the trees brought to the naturalist specimens of the blossoms thus opened by the big beaks. The combination of the golden-brown flowers and green forest; the rough-voiced parrots, olive-brown and splashed with red, swaying on the slender branch-tips; and the sunlight gleaming on the white snow, made, with the towering volcano in the background, a picture as brilliant as curious.
Whatever the dim flowers, purple fruit, and glossy leaves of many of our plants might lead the imaginative to expect, the number that are poisonous is very small. Only two examples are conspicuous, and but one does any damage to speak of. Of the noxious pair the karaka, a handsome shrub, is a favourite garden plant, thanks to its large polished leaves and the deep orange colour of its fruit. It has been a favourite, too, with the Maori from time immemorial. They plant it near their villages, and they claim to have brought it in their canoes from Polynesia. Botanists shake their heads over this assertion, however, the explanation of which is somewhat similar to a famous statement by a certain undergraduate on the crux of the Baconian controversy. “The plays of Shakespeare,” said this young gentleman, “were not written by him, but by another fellow of the same name.” It seems that there is a Polynesian karaka in the islands where the Maori once dwelt, but that it is no relation of the New Zealand shrub. The affection of the Maori for the latter was based on something more practical than an ancestral association. They were extremely fond of the kernel of its fruit. When raw, this is exceedingly bitter and disagreeable—fortunately so, for it contains then a powerful poison. Somehow the Maori discovered that by long baking or persistent steaming the kernels could be freed from this, and they used to subject them to the process in a most patient and elaborate fashion. Now and then some unlucky person—usually a child—would chew a raw kernel and then the result was extraordinary. The poison distorted the limbs and then left them quite rigid, in unnatural postures. To avoid this the Maori would lash the arms and legs of the unfortunate sufferer in a natural position, and then bury him up to his shoulders in earth. Colenso once saw a case in which this strong step had not been taken, or had failed. At any rate the victim of karaka poison, a well-grown boy, was lying with limbs stiff and immovable, one arm thrust out in front, one leg twisted backwards; he could neither feed himself nor beat off the swarm of sandflies that were pestering him. White children must be more cautious than the Maori, for though the karaka shines in half the gardens of the North Island, one never hears of any harm coming from it. The other plant with noxious properties is the tutu, and this in times past did much damage among live-stock, sheep especially. Much smaller than the karaka, it is still an attractive-looking bush, with soft leaves and purple-black clusters of berries. Both berries and shoots contain a poison, powerful enough to interest chemists as well as botanists. Sheep which eat greedily of it, especially when tired and fasting after a journey, may die in a few hours. It kills horned cattle also, though horses do not seem to suffer from it. Its chief recorded achievement was to cause the death of a circus elephant many years ago, a result which followed in a few hours after a hearty meal upon a mixture of tutu and other vegetation. So powerful is the poison that a chemist who handles the shoots of the plant for an hour or two with his fingers will suffer nausea, pain, and a burning sensation of the skin. An extremely minute internal dose makes the nausea very violent indeed. Of course, so dangerous a plant does not get much quarter from the settlers, and for this and other reasons the losses caused by tutu among our flocks and herds are far less than was the case forty or fifty years ago. Strangely enough the Maoris could make a wine from the juice of the berries, which was said to be harmless and palatable, though I venture to doubt it. White men are said to have tried the liquor, though I have never met any of these daring drinkers. Though the most dangerous plant in the islands, it does not seem to have caused any recorded death among white people for more than forty years.
ON THE PELORUS RIVER
Our flora has oddities as well as beauties. Some of its best-known members belong to the lily tribe. Several of these are as different from each other and as unlike the ordinary man’s notion of a lily as could well be. One of the commonest is a lily like a palm-tree, and another equally abundant is a lily like a tall flax. A third is a tree-dweller, a luxuriant mass of drooping blades, resembling sword-grass. A fourth is a black-stemmed wild vine, a coiling and twining parasite of the forest, familiarly named supplejack, which resembles nothing so much as a family of black snakes climbing about playfully in the foliage. Another, even more troublesome creeper, is no lily but a handsome bramble, known as the bush-lawyer, equipped with ingenious hooks of a most dilatory kind. When among trees, the lawyer sticks his claws into the nearest bark and mounts boldly aloft; but when growing in an open glade, he collapses into a sort of huddled bush, and cannot even propagate his species, though, oddly enough, in such cases, he grows hooks even more abundantly than when climbing.