CHATHAM ISLANDS BOGS. 139 
southern-beeches, the cabbage-trees, and the pittosporums. Even a 
shrub so ubiquitous as the manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) is 
extremely rare. 
The despair of the settler and the delight of the flower-lover 
are the very numerous bogs of the Chatham Islands, in which there 
is frequently an abundance of sphagnum moss (Sphagnum antare- 
ticum var. ericetorum). These are frequently occupied by a close 
growth of the purple-flowered tree-daisy (Olearia semidentata), a truly 
lovely shrub in every respect. Covered in the summer-time with 
flower-heads of the most intense purple, these olearia shrubberies 
are an entrancing spectacle (fig. 90). The Chatham tree-daisy (Olearia 
chathamica) is not so common, but it occurs in quantity on the summit 
of those precipitous cliffs forming the south coast of Chatham Island ; 
it is taller and more robust than O. semidentata, and its flowers are 
white. Growing in company with O. semidentata is the swamp-heath 
(Dracophyllum paludosum), a needle-leaved shrub 3 or 4 feet high, of 
erect, tapering, rather pyramidal growth. 
The wettest bogs are occupied by a restiaceous plant called 
Sporodanthus Traversii, the genus being confined to New Zealand. 
The plant itself increases at a great rate by means of its stout 
creeping stems; these put forth very smooth dull-brown stiff but 
flexible woody leafless rush-like stems 6 feet or more high, but 
sometimes so bent to the ground that one can walk upon them. 
Frequently the Sporodanthus is entangled with Olearia semidentata 
and Dracophyllum paludosum. Where the association is more open 
considerable breadths of the bog umbrella-fern (Gleichenia dicarpa) 
put in an appearance, as in New Zealand lowland bogs in general. 
In New Zealand proper, Sporodanthus was originally common in 
certain bogs of the Waikato; it is also to be found in the far north 
of the North Island, near Kaitaia. 
In the neighbourhood of these olearia bogs the margin of the 
forest often consists entirely of the rautini (Senecio Hunt), a 
magnificent tree-groundsel related to S. Stewartiae of the Snares, 
which produces pyramidal bunches of yellow flower-heads 5 inches 
long, and has fair-sized aromatic pale-green leaves 4 inches long in 
semi-rosettes of about twenty leaves at the ends of its stiff, bare, brittle 
twigs. For many hundreds of yards at a time this girdle of the tree 
extends, forming, when covered with its golden blossoms, a gorgeous 
mass of colour, for flowers and leaves are in about equal proportions. 
