FIRE AND FLOOD WEEDS 



285 



Cat^s-ear. 



luxuriance grew not over hundreds but over thousands of acres. After 

 fires on the " Staircase " and on the " Second Range " these paddocks 

 assumed in certain lights a strange grey-green hue. It was caused by 

 thistle-down blown from other blocks and 

 lodged in the duckweeds' sticky trails. It also 

 has nowadays become almost a rare plant. 



In '85, during a dry season, fire ran over 

 the Image Paddock, destroying the only con- 

 siderable groves of manuka then growing on the 

 run, groves perhaps in all some twenty or 

 thirty acres. Throughout this block, especially 

 on the edges of the dead groves, " capeweed " 

 or cat's- ear (Hypochceris radicata) germinated 

 in millions of millions of millions ; its seed, 

 blown from the adjoining grassed lands, had 

 been caught by the manuka tops and fallen to 

 earth as the seed of the sow-thistle had else- 

 where been trapped by woodland boughs. 

 Whilst the plant was at its zenith, from the hill- 

 tops across the lake I have watched, looking downwards, the phases of a 

 marvellous colour scheme develop, a change from orange-brown, the hue 

 of the tips of the closed blossoms, to the dazzling yellow of the fully 

 unfolded flowers ; as the plants began to expand their blossoms, I have 

 even temporarily turned my back on them, the more fully to appreciate 

 the change when viewed again. By nine on a 

 hot dry morning over scores of acres a sheet of 

 gold was spread, a dense bright carpet of colour 

 only possible on land tenanted for the first time 

 by an alien thoroughly appreciative of its en- 

 vironment. 



Suckling (Trifolium dubium), though at 

 an early date noted as a plant perfectly adapted 

 to the pumice soils of central Tutira, was never- 

 theless comparatively slow in taking full posses- 

 sion. It reached success by no short cut, its 

 little seeds were neither blown abroad as thistle, or sow-thistle, or 

 capeweed, or Canadian groundsel, or glued to the legs of sheep like 

 mouse-ear chickweed or silene; it was carried in the stomachs of 

 sheep. Its spread in the centre and west was slow because in 



Suckling. 



