SWAMP FOREST. 63 
The mixed taxad forest of Southland (fig. 33) and Stewart Island 
consists of the rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) and the kamahi (Wein- 
mannia racemosa) as the leading trees. Rhipogonum scandens and 
the common climbing-rata (Metrosideros hypericifolia) are the most 
important lianes. There are no perching- lilies. Considering the 
Stewart Island forest only, Hemitelia Smithv is the principal tree-fern. 
The kohuhu (Pittosporum tenufolium), the tarata (P. eugenioides), 
the mahoe (Melicytus ramiflorus), and the ivy-tree (Nothopanax 
aboreum) are absent, but instead of the latter and the tarata 
are the mountain ivy-tree (Nothopanax Colensoi) and Pittosporum 
Colensot var. fasciculatum. The hupiro (Coprosma foetidissima) is the 
leading shrub of the undergrowth, but C. Colensor and C. Banksia, 
both small straggling shrubs, are also common. All the above- 
mentioned trees noted as being wanting in Stewart Island occur, 
however, in the taxad forest of Southland and near Dunedin. 
Kahikatea (Podocarpus dacrydioides) forest may frequently be the 
climax association of swamp, but if the floor got drier the other 
taxads, &c., would come in and ordinary mixed rain-forest result. 
Obviously, as the habitat of this forest is true swamp, where water 
lies for almost all the year round except during a time of drought, 
this class of forest can become established with a general climate 
too dry for rain-forest proper, such as the Canterbury Plain, where 
there were originally limited areas of this plant-formation. 
The kahikatea forest consists, so far as tall trees go, almost 
exclusively of Podocarpus dacrydioides—multitudes of long, straight 
trunks, like masts of ships, rising from the swampy ground. High 
up some of the stems, except in the south of its range, climbs the 
New Zealand screw-pine, the kiekie (Freycinetia Banksii), which 
also everywhere forms a rigid entanglement along the forest-floor. 
Dead trees bridge the ever-present pools of water, and certain 
shrubs, of which; up to northern Westland at any rate, the swamp- 
coprosma (Coprosma tenuicaulis) is one, form more or less dense 
thickets. Dicksonia squarrosa is the commonest tree-fern. The 
swamp-asteliad (Astelia nervosa) is characteristic. 
Day by day this association becomes smaller and smaller, since 
it occupies land which is suitable for dairy-farming. Large areas 
still occur in Westland. In Stewart Island there are only a few 
kahikateas, the remarkable swamp-forest of that island being domi- 
nated by the yellow-pine (Dacrydium intermedium), a small taxad, 
