60 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
dominant in the north of its range, while farther south its place is 
taken by its quite different-looking relative, the tawa (Bezlschmiedia 
tawa). The kauris form smaller or larger clumps. The kauri- 
trees themselves are some distance apart, and the spaces between 
are filled up with a close growth of the huge tussocks of the kauri- 
grass (Astelia trinervia)—which, of course, is not a grass at all, but 
belongs to the lily family—and a sedge, the giant gahnia (Gahma 
xanthocarpa), with leaves sharp as a razor; while growing through 
these are certain shrubs or small trees, especially the aromatic-leaved 
maireire (Phebaliwm nudum), the spiderwood (Dracophyllum latifolium), 
young plants of the tawhero (Weimmanma sylvicola), the ivy-tree 
(Nothopanax arboreum), the white climbing-rata (Metrosideros albi- 
flora), the shrubby honeysuckle (Alsewosmia macrophylla), the forest 
tree-groundsel (Senecio Kirki), bearing in its season large white 
daisy-like blossoms, and the silver tree-fern (Cyathea dealbata). Where 
the undergrowth is more scanty the stately kauris appear in all their 
grandeur, their huge, grey, shining, columnar trunks rising up 60 
and maybe 80 feet without a branch, and dwarfing altogether the 
other trees (fig. 31). 
High above the general forest-roof tower the great spreading 
branches of the kauri, themselves equalling forest-trees in size. At 
the base of each tree is a pyramidal mound of humus caused by the 
shedding of the bark. Common in the kauri forest is the fantastic 
and irregular trunk of the northern rata (Metrosideros robusta), its 
base covered with sheets of translucent kidney-ferns (Trichomanes 
reniforme) and white cushions of the moss Leucobrywm candidum. 
Seen from without, a kauri forest is equally remarkable. The 
spreading heads of the kauris rise so high above the general forest- 
roof that it looks as if one forest were superimposed upon another. 
Very frequently there is found in the undergrowth a miniature tree- 
fern (Blechnum Fraseri), which has a very slender trunk, 1 inch or 
less in diameter—not thicker, indeed, than a stout walking-stick— 
and rarely more than 3 feet high, which spreads into large colonies 
by means of long, slender, creeping stems. The stumpy tree-fern 
(Dicksonia lanata), another small tree-fern, with leaves of a metallic 
sheen, is frequently plentiful in some places, and may “then form 
much of the undergrowth. On the forest-floor are the usual ferns 
and mosses of taxad forest, and the giant moss (Dawsonia superba) 
may form colonies, the plants being 1 to 2 feet high (fig. 32). 
