Newsletter from Godzone - As my time is mostly spent in front of a computer, from time to time (I work my own hours) I choose to break out; to do something on the wild side like go to the supermarket.
However, as the Spring days are warmer and more promising, for a change I chose instead to drive into the Kaimai ranges paralleling the coast behind the Bay of Plenty where I live, on the east coast of New Zealand. (Curiously enough, down south around the East Cape the coastal area is called Poverty Bay, which appeals to my sense of things theoretically balancing out.) My quest was to look for one or two representative plants of NZ's six (wow) epiphytic orchid species which typically reside in the 'Bush', the temperate, evergreen rainforest here - in order to try them out with the Semi-Hydroponic scheme. (There are 137 plus or minus about twenty terrestrial species here). After heading into the ranges a bit I branched off the main highway along an unsealed, winding road which followed the edge of a rocky stream. At one point along there is an educational centre mainly for school kids during the holidays, but I noticed that instead the car park was populated with a mixture of several police and 'civilian' cars - either these kids were really bad or the police were running a training session; I opted for the latter theory. Anyway, this fact will become more important later in the story. Adjacent to the educational centre one can park the car on a grassy area by the stream, and set off on foot into the bush. Specifically what I was looking for was Bulbophyllum pygmaeum (renamed Ichthyostoma - 'fish mouth'?? - maybe shape of the flowers), Drymoanthus adversus, a small sarcanthoid which can be hybridised with Sarcochilus, two Earina species - the ubiquitious mucronata and its rather different cousin autumnalis, and Dendrobium cunninghamii (renamed Winika after an old Maori name for the plant). If interested see these orchids at www.kaimaibush.co.nz/Orchids/orchid_frameset.html or www.nativeorchids.co.nz/Epiphytic_Orchids2_LR.htm Well, in a sense I got more than I bargained for because very soon after entering the bush itself I noticed in one spot a brightening in the general gloom of the forest; this can denote a gap caused by a fallen tree. In fact, a particularly large and ancient Tawa tree had crashed to the ground bringing one or two smaller ones with it - and what a mess. I was surprised by the way quite large branches were snapped and fractured in all directions, interspersed with a carpet of green leaves and twiglets, and tangles of dislodged epiphytes and vines. In this situation it's easy to climb among the mostly now horizontal branches and trunks and view a microcosm of the canopy while relatively close to the ground. Nearly every spare bark surface, twig and branch was clothed in epiphytic mosses and ferns of diverse types, but a feature of this particular tree was the extensive colonies of Den. cunninghamii, with the root bases of some individual plants nearly half a meter across, and the thin, bamboo-like branching canes sometimes a meter in length, at least - you could almost call them shrublets. In the vicinity of these larger plants are usually numerous seedlings with tiny wisps of canes from one or two inches upwards - possibly indicating a the presence of a germination-friendly fungus with its headquarters in the adult plant roots. I settled for a couple of these seedlings, and had to accept the remainder of the tree's orchid burden would eventually succumb to the ravages of grazing animals and excess sunlight. In all I got the five orchid species I was looking for off one tree. However, there is a twist to this tale which has nothing to do with orchids and normally would make me wonder if I was dreaming... On my return journey, a mile or so past the training centre the road was completely blocked by an ancient ute on its side - and milling around it was a group of large men in black clothes and balaclavas, with faces smudged in black charcoal or something... Huh??? They completely ignored me and I was able to skirt around them back onto the road. If it wasn't for the fact that I'd previously seen the police activities at the Center, I would've been steeped in wild surmise for the next day or so at least. Perhaps these guys were pretending to be "terrorists", and they'd just completed their exercise, whatever it was, and were due to head off for a cup of coffee & evening meal. Whatever; the whole occasion was completely surreal. Anyways, I still got to do my wild thing and called into the supermarket on the way back... Later Dave - >MODERNISM: >Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? >A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub >with brightly colored power tools.
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