INDIGENOUS SPECIES AS WEEDS. Lon 
already discussed—e.g., the bracken-fern, the manuka, the tauhinu, 
the swamp-lily, the sharp-leaved heath, and the raoulias of montane . 
grassland. Other New Zealand plants which have become weeds 
owing to their unpalatability and their occupying ground fit for 
palatable species are the piripiri (various varieties of Acaena Sanguis- 
orbae and A. novae-zelandiae), the cotton-plant (Celmisia spectabilis) 
—thanks to its leaf-buds being protected from burning by a covering 
of dead, wet leaf-sheaths—the small sea-holly (Lryngiwm vesicu- 
losum), the water-fern (Histiopteris «incisa), the rough bracken 
(Paesia scaberula), and many plants which grow naturally in tussock- 
grassland. 
The term “weed,” then, is evidently merely relative, and 
depends upon the plant in its relation to man. If the human 
element is left out of the question, a weed is simply a living 
organism, like any other plant or animal, and its habits and 
structure are entirely for its own benefit, just as are the organs 
of all animate beings. In itself there is nothing “noxious” at 
all, nor in an undisturbed plant-society would it react upon its 
noxious’ unless 
‘ 
ce 
neighbours more than any other plant; nor is it 
it is doing agricultural or horticultural damage, or certain to lead 
eventually to such damage. 
Before leaving the question of weeds, those minute organisms 
may be mentioned which, settling upon other plants and living 
as parasites, damage and not infrequently kill the host. To this 
category belongs that vast assortment of lowly plants commonly 
termed “ blights.”” Many of these are members of the great family 
of fungi. For the most part their structure cannot be made 
out without the aid of the compound microscope, but their 
presence is often writ large on the unfortunate host-plant. The 
rusts and smuts, the so-called Irish potato-disease, the organism 
causing “damping off”’ in seedlings, and many other plant-diseases 
fall into the category of “ blights.” Right at the north-east corner 
of Chatham Island is an old orchard, planted before the middle 
of the last century. At the time of the author’s visit to the 
Chathams, seventeen years ago, he was astonished to learn that 
blights of all kinds were quite unknown at that particular part of the 
island, the extreme isolation of the orchard having proved its salva- 
tion. And so, too, it was with New Zealand orchards in the early 
days, before the coming of the microscopic weeds. Many of the 
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