FIRE AND FLOOD WEEDS 283 



Sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceous) was another most prominent fire 

 plant temporarily possessing hundreds of acres of newly-burnt forest land. 

 I have seen brairds of this weed so thick that whilst the plants were 

 still young and flat on the ground, the surface seemed rather blue-green 

 than green, owing to the young leaves' peculiar hue. On soil deep in 

 leaf-mould and grey with ash, millions upon millions of seedlings germi- 

 nated. As the cotyledons appeared immediately after the first rain, it 

 was evident that seed had been already strewn on the forest floor; 

 carried by the winds from scattered individual plants surviving on cliffs 

 and natural escarpments, lightly buried in leaf-mould and debris, they 

 had but awaited the call of the sun. The sow-thistle flourished with an 

 equal exuberance after the destruction by fire of flax-swamps. 



Prickly thistle (Cnicus lanceolatus) was, in the 'eighties, only 

 to be seen in quantity on the seaward fertile portion of the run. 

 Unlike the weeds already mentioned, each of which blossomed as 

 annuals, thistle growth was dependent on the nature of the soil. On 

 sound marl land after autumn fires the -seedlings germinated, became 

 great prickly stars during winter, and blossomed during the succeeding 

 summer. On the other hand, throughout the pumice stretches of 

 central Tutira, it became a biennial, reaching maturity only during 

 the second season. 



Another plant, not to be found except after fires had swept the 

 land bare, was the little quake-grass (Briza, minor). I have found this 

 handsome species on almost every part of Tutira, but never in any 

 single instance plentiful. It has indeed been discovered by me in such 

 out-of-the-way spots at such early dates that I have sometimes won- 

 dered if after all it may not be an indigenous species ; repeatedly, more- 

 over, I have got it where before fire the countryside had been a sheet 

 of dense fern, where alien grass had never been sown, where almost no 

 human foot had trod. Guesses, at any rate, can be made at the methods 

 by which most species transport themselves from spot to spot, also as 

 to the agencies animate or inanimate employed, but the propagation 

 and spread of this grass remains a puzzle. 



In the early 'eighties occurred two dry seasons during which grass 

 fires were run over the hot western and northern faces of certain portions 

 on eastern Tutira ; on the blackened ground then and once again seed- 

 lings of brome-grass (Bromus mollis) appeared in so great profusion that 

 other grasses were temporarily submerged in hillsides of waving hay. 



