95 
NURSE PLANTS. 
renders no annual report to managing directors and pays no heed to expectant 
shareholders. Economic forestry, while accepting nature’s laws, must lay all its 
plans and adjust all its methods in view of an early reckoning with the auditor 
and the banker. 
State Foiests officers and private tree planters have often taken advantage 
of the nuising conditions offered by native scrub. Where the scrub has been 
evenly distributed and of suitable density and height, results have been eminently 
satisfactoiy. \ aluable but tender species have been established where otherwise it 
would ha's e been wasted time to plant them. Xlie problem suggested for 
consideration and solution is that of localities where no nurse plants of any 
description at present exist, and where frosts and winds are both severe. We must 
suppose that the land has no plant cover but grass, and then ask ourselves how it 
can be clothed with beautiful and useful trees. Hardy pines will accept the 
conditions; so also will a few of the very hardy eucalypts. But species that start 
their lives in a highly tender and precarious condition will perish almost as fast as 
we plant them. If we are to persist and succeed in the attempt to extend the 
range of these valuable but difficult species, we must provide them with nurses. 
W hether this can be done and whether it will pay for the doing are questions that 
can be answered only by competent experiment. 
The ideal nurse plant will be readily propagated. It will be tall enough and 
strong enough to protect the tree plants in their first winter. It will be easily 
prevented from overgrowing and suppressing the tree plants. It will not be 
dangerously inflammable. If persistent in the plantation, its presence will always 
be beneficial to the trees. It will never become a weed. Of all the plants at 
present available the one that seems most completely to satisfy these requirements 
within its own climatic range is tree lucerne (Trifolium tagasaste). Given a 
good start in October, this plant may be expected to reach a height of four feet 
by the middle of the following April. It can thus give good shelter to the tree 
plants in their first winter. By their second winter it will be seven to eight feet 
high, firmly rooted, dense, and sturdy. Experiments with tree lucerne as a nurse 
plant will be most successful on land that has been sweetened and prepared by 
cultivation. The tree seed should be sown in lines twelve feet apart and the lucerne 
seed in intermediate lines. This will give a spacing at the start of six feet between 
the permanent plants and the nurse plants. The scheme will require a generous 
amount of seed in both cases, and will be greatly helped by a sprinkling of blood 
and bone manure along the lines. If the trees are rapid-growing eucalypts, they 
will soon dominate the nurse. With a good take they will be crowded in the 
lines, and will need thinning from time to time as they grow and develop. 
Tree lucerne is friendly to other vegetation and palatable to stock. In the 
green stage it is resistant to fire, but when mature and dry yields fuel of high 
quality. As a floor cover in the plantation it would promote health and vigour 
in the larger trees. Many flourishing specimens of this plant may be seen in the 
Auckland region, in Hawke’s Bay, in the Wairarapa, about Wellington, and in 
Marlborough. When planted in damp hollows it has sometimes been injured by 
frost. This suggests that there is a climatic limit beyond which it will no longer 
be able to serve our purpose. When that limit has been reached we must look for 
other plants to take its place. With a great and varied plant world round us, we 
Note. —In any complete list of nurse plants tree lupine (Lupinus arboreus ) would claim a favoured place, 
is hardy over a wide range of conditions, and persists for several years without becoming unduly 
It 
tall. 
