Walsh. — On tJic Future of the New Zealand BusJt. 475 



seem to take the lead in particular localities. Thus, near 

 Whangarei are found handsome coppices almost entirely com- 

 posed of totara ; on the broken ground round the Taranaki 

 coast the white-leaved wharangi or pukapuka is chiefly pro- 

 minent ; the makomako, or settlers' " light-wood," springs up 

 over the clearings on the Mount Egmout slope, and on similar 

 light soils elsewhere ; on the uplands of the Nelson Province 

 the beech encroaches on the cultivated lands ; the terraces 

 between the White Cliffs and the Ngatimaru country, in 

 Taranaki, have a character of their own in the groves of waving 

 korau fern-trees ; while on the clay ranges in the vicinity of 

 Mercury Bay the dark cone-shaped rewarewa grows with a 

 regularity suggestive of artificial plantation. The same thing 

 may be seen in the case of the fuchsia, the yellow kowhai, the 

 ake, the towai, the tipau, the houhere, the whau, the ngaio, 

 and a host of other minor forms, each of which seems to seek 

 a place where it can flourish by itself, or where for a time at 

 least it can form the principal feature. 



The great exception to this rule is the tea-tree, of which 

 there are two principal varieties — the manuka and the kahika- 

 atoa. The tea-tree is the most interesting and important 

 constituent of the "second growth"; it is practically a constant 

 quantity, thriving equally on almost all soils and in nearly every 

 situation — high and low, wet and dry, exposed or sheltered, it 

 is all the same to this hardy and vigorous plant. Distributed, 

 as the late Mr. T. Kirk states,''' over all districts from the 

 Three Kings to Stewart Island, and even to the Snares, it is 

 equally at home on the nortjrern gumfields, the pumice plains 

 of the interior, the swamps of the lower Waikato, amid the 

 ocean spray of the storm-swept promontories, and the steam 

 and sulphur vapours of the hot- lakes district. Everywhere 

 adapting itself to circumstances, on barren and exposed situa- 

 tions it flowers and seeds as a plant 2 in. high, while on rich 

 alluvial bottoms it attains the dimensions of a handsome forest 

 tree. The tea-tree is the connecting-link between the old and 

 the new. Though freely burning green in its scrub state, and 

 so helping to spread the fire into the surrounding bush, if it 

 gets a chance it acts as the nursing mother of the new growth. 

 On the clay lands of the north, wherever it manages to escape 

 the fire for a few years, seedlings of the original trees invari- 

 ably appear under its shelter, among which it is not uncom- 

 mon to find healthy young kauris, tanekahas, and other forms 

 never seen in the open ; and in places where it has survived 

 for a lengthened period the species becomes gradually more 

 numerous, so that it requires an experienced eye to distinguish 

 the new growth from the original bush. 



* " Forest Flora of New Zealand," p. 23G. 



