262 TUTIRA 



fully tended by man for hundreds of years, should endure, as it has 

 done on Tutira for more than half a century, an entire absence of tillage, 

 the strangulation of matted turf, the trampling of stock, the competition 

 of cherry-suckers and the shade of trees, has always been a matter of 

 surprise to me. Yet in 1906 I gathered tubers, healthy though de- 

 teriorated in size to big peas, from native cultivation-grounds deserted 

 for fifty years. Very carefully disentangled from turf and replanted 

 with fibrous roots undamaged, these peas produced that same season 

 potatoes as large as damsons. Next year I had a profusion of well- 

 grown tubers, blue-skinned and blue also throughout the flesh. Though 

 of no great size, they possessed the peculiar flavour of the plant in a 

 marked degree ; in taste they were superior to the more shapely field 

 and garden varieties of modern times. 



Carrot (Daucus carota) grows sparsely though vigorously in some 

 of the homestead clover - paddocks. Parsnip (Peucedanum sativum) 

 and horse-radish (Cochlearia armoracia) maintain themselves, in spite 

 of weeding, chipping, and digging, on the site of the original garden of 

 1884. The former has also in light lands persisted for years on the 

 site of a deserted drover's camp, having probably arrived there as 

 seed in sacking. 



Though here and there in the district the vine ( Vitis vinifera) still 

 flourishes, it cannot be considered truly a garden escape. As, however, 

 a solitary specimen on Tutira has survived for half a century on the 

 site of George Bee's deserted garden near the foot of the zigzag on 

 the Heru-o-Tureia block, I include it in our list. Another grows on 

 the banks of the Waikoau, midway between the eastern ford of that 

 river and the coast. The vine, I believe, never in Hawke's Bay 

 renews itself by seed, though raisin stones, accidentally reaching dry 

 soils, germinate freely. 



Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare), not even now to be found as a pot- 

 herb in the station garden, grows but on one spot on Tutira. As its 

 arrival illustrates what must occur in the way of combination of 

 favourable chances before a new species can appear in a new locality, 

 as also the plant is one about whose manner of travel there can be 

 almost no doubt whatever, it deserves the distinction of a paragraph. 



I found it in occupation of ground directly beneath an angle-post 

 in the Tutira-Arapawarmi boundary fence. The upkeep of a mutual 

 march, renewal of wire, replacement of broken and rotting posts, is 



