1/2 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



only a few of our native plants have their buds specially 

 protected. The mapaus, black and white, are now un- 

 folding their long slender buds, covered by brown-edged 

 scale leaves, which increase in size from the outermost till 

 we come to the fully -formed leaves on the opened branches. 

 The white iiiapau has had its fragrant clusters of yellow 

 flowers open for two or three weeks, while the black is now 

 putting forth its solitary brownish-purple flowers. The 

 Panax, too sometimes named the New Zealand gum tree 

 has its buds protected, but in these it is the dark purple 

 sheaths of the old leaf-stalks which cover the delicate 

 young blades. How closely packed these young leaflets 

 are ! When so young they are soft and flaccid, but they 

 thicken and harden with age, and then the frost touches 

 them not. The hina-hina is now beginning to bud again 

 after its recent sharp defoliation, but its buds have no 

 special protection ; the young leaves have their two edges 

 just rolled in towards each other. The pepper trees 

 simply have their young leaves folded together ; the 

 veronicas and coprosmas cover each pair of young leaves 

 by the preceding pair. These and many other plants testify 

 by various details of their structure to the fact that the 

 struggle for existence in these islands has not been so keen 

 as it has been in the widespread lands of the northern 

 hemisphere. Here in past days there has been no glacial 

 epoch to drive our plants into nearer proximity to the 

 tropics. The conclusions of the geologists drawn from 

 a consideration of the plants and animals which formerly 

 flourished here and left their remains in our sedimentary 

 rocks are that this country at the time of the develop- 

 ment of its present flora was on the whole warmer than it 

 now is, and that its plants had mostly a sub-tropical or 

 warm - temperate character. The Nikau Palm is now 

 placed in the genus Rhopalostylis, but was formerly 

 known as Areca sapida. The southern spread of the 

 palms of the genus Areca, which still maintain a slight 

 foothold in Banks Peninsula, the occurrence of Hakea or 

 some closely-allied form of Proteaceous plant in the lacust- 

 rine clays of St Bathans, and many similar facts, all point 



