296 



TUTIRA 



Centaury. 



a weed that has never taken kindly to a diet of pumice, preferring the 

 roadside soils of the limestone area. Like many another pedestrian 



plant, it does not freely reproduce itself, lacking 

 such stimulants as the trampling and treading of 

 stock, the stir of soil by their feet. 



Only these three plants managed to nego- 

 tiate the old pack-trail before it was transformed 

 into a road. Their small number testifies how 

 well-guarded were the passes into Tutira 

 estuaries, salt beaches, barren shingle strips, un- 

 bridged rivers, close-cropped hill-tops, high, cold, 

 lean summits of pumiceous ground. On each the 

 highway of the 'eighties cleansed itself of seeds as 

 an animal rids itself of parasites. 



With the discovery of a road-line striking 

 directly inland from the coast, a new era dawned 

 for pedestrian weeds. Feeding on the virgin soils 

 displaced by pick and shovel, basking on the dry banks of loose soil, 

 wading along the water-tables, battening on the sheep-camps, they moved 

 inland in numbers. One of the earliest to take advantage of the easier 



conditions afforded was ox-tongue (Picris echi- 

 oides). Its local origin was the Coastal Hill 

 sheep-camp, where for two seasons the plant grew 

 in dense masses like a sown crop. Later it 

 appeared on the Maori cultivation-grounds about 

 Tangoio. There it had stayed its course, one of 

 the many sybarites which had not dared to face 

 the wilds or which had failed through want of 

 stamina, but which was now again tempted to 

 advance by the presence of stirred soils and the 

 warmth of friable slopes. Keeping pace with the 

 road-making operations, for two or three miles 

 inland it grew plentifully, then as the distance 

 from the coast increased it was less often to be 

 seen. It failed completely on the pumiceous 

 heights, but reappeared, though scantily, on the 



warm northern slopes of Dolbel's Big Face. First specimens noted on 

 Tutira flowered in one of the old gardens close to the roadside. It is 



Ox-tongue. 



