98 TUTIRA 



On such aspects, in competition with tutu (Coraria ruscifolia) and 

 koromiko (Veronica salicifolia), fern averaged five or six feet in 

 height. On hot dry northern and western slopes it grew a foot or 

 two less. No dry soil, however, was too bad to nourish bracken. 

 Stunted to a few stiff inches, it covered alike the driest hill-tops and 

 the most arid flats. 



The growth of the plant is as follows : early in November myriads 

 of minute brown-green circinate fronds begin to appear, each uplifting 

 its own little cap of earth, as trap-door spiders raise the lids of their 

 dry homes. Later these fronds grow into notes of interrogation, then, 

 rising well above the old growth, each opens into the likeness of a 

 man's hand bent back from the wrist, with fingers still curled up. 



Later again the fronds develop into antlered spikes mossed with 

 ferruginous dust. At last, fully unfolded, they assume the sombre 

 green hue characteristic of fern country in New Zealand. On poorest 

 soils bracken most quickly matures ; on good ground weeks pass 

 before the fronds attain completion. After its spring growth, unless 

 scorched by fire or eaten by stock, the plant rests until the following 

 spring. Unlike its British relative, which rots away in a single 

 winter, six or seven different seasons' crop can be discriminated in the 

 tangled masses of the New Zealand plant. The lowest are in various 

 stages of fragmentary decay, others brittle and brown though sound ; 

 another is mottled with grey, but still in patches preserving its green ; 

 another bowed and weatherworn, only its tips sere ; another dull 

 green and almost perfect ; the latest crop of all still erect and topping 

 the growths of former years. Such was the appearance of Tutira in 

 former times. 



There was but little room for other plants. In fact, as mountains 

 prove the last resort of peoples driven from their homes by conquest, 

 so in the cliff system of Tutira plants survived which must have 

 otherwise perished in the tyranny of fern. The reader knows the 

 physiography of the station an alternation of slope and cliff; a 

 drainage system far beneath the level. Over every slope fern lay in 

 swathes : it reached to the base of every cliff, it hung like a fringe 

 over every precipice. 



Forest and woodland covered less than two out of sixty 

 thousand acres forest growing in the ranges of the interior, well 

 worthy of its name from the immense size of many of its indi- 



