Wednesday wildflower: Red carpet, brown carpet

When I use the term wildflower, it's often to avoid the judgmental term "weed".  I like most plants, and if other people have species they don't like, well, that doesn't necessarily stop me enjoying them.  Furthermore, plants we designate as weeds are often biologically very interesting.  To a botanist, the term "weediness" has an ecological meaning that signifies more than a nuisance plant.

Pōhutukawa flowers

One of the interesting things weeds do well is reproduce.  All that any plant or animal needs to do is to reproduce itself at least once, but because an outcrossing sexual plant or animal contributes only one of its two sets of genes to each offspring it must do it twice to break even.  Even then, reproducing a few times doesn't guarantee the survival of all your genetic material, because which copies of genes get into a sperm or egg is random.  But some plants seem to reproduce in overdrive.

Weeds often succeed because they out-reproduce other plants.  Some are long-lived and may spread vegetatively, but others produce huge numbers of seeds.

A few red stamens have accumulated in the gutter beneath these trees, but sometimes, if it's not windy, a thick red carpet can build up.

Today's wildflower is a weed in the biological sense, but to New Zealanders it's a much-loved native flowering tree, the pōhutukawa, Metrosideros excelsa.  Pōhutukawa puts a lot of effort into reproduction, and that's probably why it's an unwanted weed in some other parts of the world where it has been introduced as an ornamental, like South Africa and Hawai'i.  Some people also consider it a weed in parts of New Zealand that are outside of its native range, such as Wellington, because it's invasive and aggressive there too.

A cluster of pōhutukawa flowers; each individual flower has about 25 red stamens (with yellow anthers) and one red style.

Pōhutukawa reproduction seems wasteful.  The trees flower profusely around Christmas time in New Zealand and in the later part of each flower's life the bright red stamens fall to the ground where they can form a thick red carpet.  This isn't over-production particularly; it's just that the red stamens are so visible and there are so many flowers producing them.  They can be dispensed with once their pollen has been dispersed.  They're visible for a good reason: pōhutukawa is primarily pollinated by birds (tūī, bellbirds, but also silvereyes and starlings) and the red colour attracts them because birds see well in the red wavelengths.

A bit later in the summer, many of the old flowers themselves fall.  I guess these are flowers that aren't setting seed; they no longer have a function and the plant can discard them.  I don't know whether these are functionally male flowers or simply flowers that didn't get pollinated, but these form a pale grey-green carpet for a time.

Pōhutukawa seeds in the gutter, Kelburn, Wellington

The third big dump of reproductive material is happening about now in Wellington, and that's the dispersal of seeds in their millions.  Most of these are never going to germinate.  They pile up in gutters, on footpaths, and at the bases of walls.  I'd like to do a rough calculation of the weight of stamens, aborted flowers, and seeds produced by a large pōhutukawa tree in a season; I think we'd all be surprised.  Multiply that, whatever it is, by the number of trees in Wellington and that's a lot of biomass falling to the ground each year.

Pōhutukawa seeds.

This prodigious reproductive effort is one of the attributes that makes pōhutukawa such a successful plant, and it's a trait normally associated with weediness.  No wonder then that our Christmas tree has become a pest in places.

The Barber's

Getting a haircut in the 50s and 60s was a very masculine thing.  The Barber’s was an all male environment and you had to know, really know, how to behave there.  If your mother came in with you, she wouldn’t stay long (you’d hope).

The Barber was a wizened and enigmatic character, his thinning hair Brylcreemed back, or sidewards in a comb-over if it was thinning too much.  His face was haggard and he smoked; he looked a bit like a jockey.  You didn’t want to piss this guy off: he could kick you out of the shop, or probably something worse.

My first haircut in New Zealand was in 1955, in Whanganui.  I don’t remember getting it cut in England, but oh boy this was memorable.  The shop smelled of Bay Rum, Brylcreem, and cigarette smoke. I was five.  My Dad took me, and The Barber had this enormous wrought iron barber’schair. I was thinking, “how am I going to get up into that?”, when he produced a seat on a plank that sat across the arm-rests, and lifted me up onto it.  It had leather padding and its own little arm-rests, and I felt really special.  But the hand-operated clippers pulled at my hair and I squirmed.  Eventually The Barber got so grumpy he whacked me over the head with the handles of the scissors.  I didn’t dare cry, and Dad didn’t come to my rescue, such was the manly power of The Barber.

Later, in Tawa, The Barber’s became a regular ritual.  You’d be dropped off there to wait your turn and get your hair cut, usually on a Friday after school.  There was a long bench seat that ran around three sides of the shop, and you took your place at one end and shuffled along as each boy’s hair was done.  Sometimes there were too many waiting and you had to stand until a seat became free.  There were comics to read, and that was the best thing.  We were only allowed “Classics” comics at home, which told the stories of Dickens and the like in comic form, but here was the real thing: Phantom, all the Disney characters, and best of all, war comics.  Battler Britton, scrambled by an air raid during a cricket match on the village green, runs out of ammo over occupied France, and bowls the cricket ball he had stuffed into his battledress pocket to switch over the railway points and send the German ammunition train crashing into a horrendous explosion!  We always drew Spitfires and Hurricanes on the backs of our school books.

The Barber had a big poster behind the counter.  It was a kangaroo, leaping, with envelopes spilling out of its (her) pouch, and the caption “We post to Australia”.  I sat and stared at this, and I still don’t know what it meant.  I suspect it had to do with gambling; maybe the barber was an agent for Tattersall’s Lottery or something.  It was all exotic and dark.  Men, real men who smoked and swore, would come in, and the barber would leave off cutting hair and go behind the counter.  There would be a quiet conversation and money would change hands, but I never understood what was going on.  Later I learned that barbers sold condoms (we called them “Frenchies”), but I always suspected these clandestine transactions had something to do with the flying kangaroo.

After an hour or two of comics and shuffling along the bench, you’d finally get to have your hair cut.  It was always a bit off the top and short back and sides, even if you asked for something else.  When the cutting was done, he’d violently rub in some Brylcreem, slapping your head about in the process, comb and brush your hair into a bit of a style, flick the cut hairs off your collar, and finish off with a little spray of smelly stuff.  Everyone’s hairstyle was the same. 

By about 1964 we all wanted Beatles haircuts, long enough to be thought Fab, but short enough not to earn a detention.  The barber never understood this; we all walked out with short back and sides, then put off our next visit as long as we could and combed our hair, what was left of it, forward as much as we could; making the best of a bad job, a bit like The Barber’s comb-over.

After the barber’s, if you were lucky, was fish and chips for dinner, and you could buy a classic comic at the bookshop, or a 45 rpm record.  I remember buying “A Fool Such As I” by Elvis Presley.  I’ve still got it somewhere.  But no more barber’s for me; I don’t have enough hair any more.

Lila's big day out.

It’s ANZAC Day, New Zealand’s day to remember the war dead.  It’s an important day for my family too, because we arrived in New Zealand on ANZAC Day (April 25) 1955 on the MV Ruahine. 

Today it rained on and off all morning, so when the sun came out after lunch we had to get out for a walk.  Rufus was happy inside, but Lila was out in the garden and decided to follow us.  We tried to outrun her, but in the end decided to give in and let her come with us.

So she tagged along quite happily for the first 500m or so and then seemed to get a bit tired.  She was very wary the whole time, probably because she was out of her territory and in a place of new smells and sounds.

You might feel it’s wrong to take a cat into the bush, especially so close to Zealandia.  First, she’s not a hunter (yes I know cat owners always say that, like dog owners say their dogs don’t bite).  Secondly, she was too busy keeping up with us and watching her back.  Thirdly, and I know it’s not a valid argument but I’ll make it anyway, lots of cat-owning households back onto that bush and people walk their dogs there all the time.  I agree with Gareth Morgan that cats should be enclosed so they can’t hunt birds and lizards.

It’s autumn now.  The drought is well and truly behind us and fruits and fungi were the features of this walk.

Favolaschia calocera

Favolaschia calocera is an introduced fungus that lives on dead wood.  It’s become very common around Wellington.  Under the cap are large pores instead of gills.

Under the cap of Favolaschia calocera are honeycombed pores.

Buds of kohekohe, Dysoxylum spectabile.

Kohekohe (Dysoxylum spectabile) is going to have a bumper flowering this year.  The sprays of small white flowers are produced on the tree trunks, and a number were quite low down.  When these open, I’ll easily be able to reach them and get good photos.  Individual trees are either male or female, although some males can set a few fruits.

Outside the bush, the track follows the Zealandia pest-proof fence alongside a clay banks with a nice range of mosses and lichens and a view of the harbour.  We didn’t go far along, because Lila was clearly getting tired by now.

Passiflora fruits, one eaten by birds

Native passion flower (Passiflora tetrandra) was in fruit.  Orange rinds littered the ground where birds had opened the fruits for their meagre pulp and few seeds.  I found one intact one.

Inside the Passiflora fruit are bright red seeds and pulp.

The fruit has three parts (carpels) and the ovules and (later) seeds are attached in three rows to the outer walls where they join.

Home at last, Lila staggered in the door and immediately collapsed on the cool wooden floor.  She’ll sleep well tonight.

A little gift on the doorstep

When you have cats, you have to get used to odd and sometimes gross gifts on the doorstep, but this morning's little surprise didn't come from the cats.

Wētā dropping with embedded seeds.  The New Zealand 10c coin is 20.5 mm diameter

Wētā are large flightless Orthopterans (crickets), and this is wētā poop.  The dropping is about 5 mm diameter, so this is a big insect.  Note the embedded seeds; they've passed right through the wētā's gut. Probably it was a Wellington tree wētā (Hemideina crassidens), which are common in the garden.  These seeds are quite large, and I suspect they're Coprosma robusta.

Coprosma robusta in fruit, Tunnel Gully, Wellington.

I could wash them out and put them under the microscope to confirm their identity, but instead, I've just planted the poop to see what comes up.  I'll report back when I get a result.

A close-up of the seeds.

Duthie et al. (2006) reported wētā dispersal of seeds in New Zealand.  Mostly the seeds dispersed were smaller than these.  The underside of this dropping had several more showing, so I'm expecting up to 8 or even 10 seedlings.

Reference.

Duthie, C., Gibbs, G., Burns, K.C., 2006. Seed dispersal by weta. Science 311: 1575.

45 years on—10th April 1968.

Forty-five years ago I was a first year student at Victoria University of Wellington, studying Botany, Zoology, and Chemistry.  On April 10th, I woke up early, before seven, to the howling of the wind and the house creaking and shaking.  It was a very strong single-story house – Dad designed it with earthquakes in mind and the builder claimed it was “overbuilt” – so it didn’t creak often.  I don’t recall if I was worried, but I was certainly surprised by the strength of the wind, the constant roar of noise, and the shaking.  In the hallway outside my bedroom I met Dad on his way back from the bathroom.  He told me the inter-island ferry Wahine was aground on Barrett’s reef, but that everyone was safe.  The wind is said to have peaked that day at 275 km/h.  NIWA has published a catalogue of weather extremes, damage, injury, and loss of life that day.  Our house in Linden was at a similar altitude and exposure to Kelburn, where they recorded just under 200 km/h.

At breakfast we debated about going in to work (Dad) and university (me).  It was probably after breakfast that the power went off, ruling out our usual transport, the electric trains.  Then a neighbor called to say her husband had tried to drive into town and had turned back because it was too windy on the motorway.  We decided to sit tight.

I guess it was mid-morning when the roof blew off the house next door but one.  For some reason, Dad and I were in the laundry watching the storm from there, so we saw the iron sheets lift off one by one and fly tumbling through the air towards us.  Dad had the presence of mind to get me out of the room and close the door; however no iron hit the house, but it did demolish our fence where some sheets embedded end-on 5mm into the wood.  Dad and I dashed across the intervening section to help our neighbors evacuate the house.  I foolishly sprinted through the swirling iron; he sensibly ducked around the back out of its flight path. 

Minor damage at home, 10 April 1968

At some stage during the morning our 5m Norfolk pine (Araucaria excelsa: Dad used to call it the Alka-Seltzer) tipped over at about 30˚ off the vertical.  We watched a tree across the road thrash itself out of the ground and then roll end-over-end down the street like a giant tumbleweed, never to be seen again.

Some time in the early afternoon everything went calm.  We thought it was the eye of the storm, and expected the wind to pick up again from the north, but it was all over.  I don’t recall hearing more about the Wahine until the TV news that night.  My memories of that are all mixed up with what I’ve heard since.  Fifty-four people died in that storm, 51 on the Wahine.  The display at Wellington's Museum of City & Sea captures it all; it still makes me tear up.

Students who did turn up for lectures had an exciting morning, they told me later.  Prof Gordon had valiantly tried to give the Botany I lecture, but abandoned it when slates from the roof of the Hunter Building started crashing through the lecture room windows.

Smashed pine trees, Colonial Knob, Wellington, 1968

 The following weekend was Easter, and I went tramping in the Tararuas with two friends.  Another friend couldn’t come because his cross country running club had volunteered to search the south coast for bodies.  On Cone Saddle we encountered a whole beech forest tipped over.  We ended up having to climb among the fallen trees to get through, sometimes walking along logs that were 5m above the ground. 

At home, we fixed the fence and pulled the Norfolk pine upright again.  For me, the day had been pretty benign really, but I still think about it every time 10 April comes around.  For many people, I guess life took a sudden and unexpected turn that day.  People survive a lot worse—Christchurch earthquakes, the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, let alone the blitz, Dresden, or Hiroshima—but these things all leave their mark.

Improvised macro lens for a point & shoot camera.

Flower of an unnamed native buttercup, photographed with my old Spotmatic. The flower is probably about 15 mm diameter.

Years ago (about 1970) I was given an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic 35mm camera with a 50mm macro lens.  I used that camera for field and family photography for about 30 years.  It was tough and I never had it serviced, and sometimes the photos were great.  In the last 12 years I've had three different digital cameras, all cheap(ish) point-and-shoot models.  While they get pretty close, they don't match the best performance of the Spotmatic for plant close-ups, although they have some real advantages.  On the whole I'm pretty happy with the latest one, a Sony Cybershot 14.1 megapixel camera.  It's small and light and has a macro function that does a reasonable job with all but the smallest flowers.
 
Digital cameras are evolving rapidly and so I seem to need a replacement every few years. Fortunately they're also getting cheaper as they get better.  I'm reluctant to shell out a lot of money for a digital SLR, knowing in a few years it'll be obsolete, or at least surpassed by newer models.  However, I would like to get closer to small flowers, so I've been playing with cheap alternatives.

The latest is a $10 home-made macro lens.  It's inspired by the idea of the Ōlloclip lenses for iPhone (I've just bought a set of these and they're pretty good and very portable).  You can get reasonable results by simply holding a botanist's field lens in front of the camera lens, but I was lucky enough to have a cheap jeweler's loop that fits quite snugly over the lens of my camera.  Unfortunately though, it's a bit tricky to hold it aligned in place while you take the photo.  I wanted something a bit more stable.

I hit on the idea of using cheap plastic plumbing attachments to hold the lenses together.  Here's the camera with the parts of the new system.  The loop fits snugly in one end, and the other end fits snugly over the camera lens when it's extended.  You have to zoom a bit to fill the field of view.

My point & shoot camera with components of the clip-on macro lens: a $2.50 plastic pipe attachment and a $10 jeweler's loop.

And here's my camera with its new macro lens fitted.  I still have to hold it while I take the photo, but the pipe fits snugly so I don't have to position it as well.  I could superglue a threaded plastic ring onto the camera, then screw the pipe attachment into it (it's threaded on both ends), but I don't want to do that to my camera, at least until it's out of warranty (in a few weeks).  If I did that, I could put the camera on a tripod for greater stability and better focusing, so I might do it quite soon.

The macro lens clip-on in place.

The real test is in the results.  Here are three shots for comparison: using the standard camera as close as it can get (left), then using the new clip-on lens with the zoom half-extended (centre) and fully extended (although not quite focused, right).  Printed at 300 dpi, the 1 cm wide key in the right hand picture would be about 33 cm across:

The new system has quite a good working distance and is easy to use.  There is a little distortion of parallel lines (see above), and there might be other effects like chromatic aberration that I haven't looked for.  But at $12.50, it's a bargain.  I'm playing with other improvised systems too, and might report on them later.

I used it in the field this week too:

Veronica scutellata, Foxton Beach.  In the original photo, the flower was 1240 pixels across; in life it's about 6mm.

Veronica catenata, Himitangi Beach.  In the original photo, the flower was 800 pixels across; in life it's about 4 mm.

To finish, here's what the Ōlloclip macro lens can do with an iPhone 4S:

Veronica serpyllifolia capsule.  It's 4 mm across, and spans about 600 pixels in the original.

It focuses at 13mm, so I guess I need some kind of adjustable stand to hold the phone at that distance from the subject.  I've started building one.

Wednesday wildflower: Banksia integrifolia

Many of our most widespread New Zealand invasive plants came here as weeds, maybe as seed impurities, or in soil or agricultural products.  A majority came from Europe, where the new people came from and where climates and land use practices are similar.  Others were deliberately brought, like gorse and barberry as hedging plants.  But as people started to realise the risks of allowing invasive plants into the country, our controls have tightened, and now it's pretty hard to deliberately or accidentally get something across the border.

So where are the weeds of the future going to come from?  Many are already here, as garden plants.  Perhaps 20,000 species are cultivated as ornamentals or crops.  Many are tender and hard to grow, and it's unlikely these will escape.  But if the climate changes, some subtropical or dry-climate plants might be able to propagate and spread without human help, becoming new weeds.

An infestation of Hieracium lepidulum, near Arrowtown, Otago.

Weed naturalisation often takes a while.  There may be a period of decades when botanists find the odd few plants, but it's not certain whether full naturalisation is taking place.  But then, in some, there's a sudden increase and they quickly become common and widespread.  Hieracium spp. did this.  Maybe the slow start is caused by low genetic diversity, lack of pollinators or dispersers, or maybe there's a change in land use (irrigation, fertilisation) that suddenly suits the invader.  In some, it's possible that the establishing population might evolve (allele frequencies change in the establishing population, due to natural selection or perhaps genetic drift).

Banksia integrifolia is a weed that seems to be in this early establishment phase.  It wasn't included in the Flora of New Zealand volume that deals with naturalised "dicotyledons" (Webb et al. 1988).  I remember collecting a wild specimen on Great Barrier Island in 1990.  Whether or not that was the first wild record, nowadays this small Australian tree has been picked up in quite a few localities.  I collected my second specimen a few years ago growing just outside the predator-proof fence of the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary (now Zealandia).  The authoritative plants database of Landcare Research is the best source for plant data because it's collection based (therefore verifiable) and it incorporates the expertise of the professional taxonomists there: they record specimens of Banksia integrifolia from Northland, South Auckland, Taranaki, Manawatu, Wellington, and Nelson.

It's possible Banksia integrifolia is a new woody weed in the making, which will take off shortly and become a problem.  However it is a fire-adapted species, needing fire to split the woody seed capsules and release the seeds in large numbers, and being a tree, it should be easy to eradicate before it flowers, unless there are large numbers.  This is a plant to be viewed with caution, so a number of Wellington botanists were concerned when Zealandia planted young trees inside the sanctuary because their compact inflorescences could provide out-of-season nectar for birds like tūī, hihi, and bellbirds.

Banksia integrifolia at Zealandia

I visited Zealandia today and took these photos.  The sanctuary and the forest are doing well, even in this dry summer, and the bird life was spectacular.  The Banksia have established well, ironically quite close to a display that warns about invasive plants.  They were in flower, which is timely because the only native bird-pollinated flowers I saw were on a single rātā, Metrosideros fulgens, and that seems out of season (normally flowers early Spring).  So, it's good for the nectar-feeding birds, but let's hope the local botanists who advised Zealandia against planting Banksia were wrong about its ability to establish.  Time will tell.

An inflorescence of Banksia integrifolia

Banksia is a member of the Protea family, Proteaceae.  Its flowers are pollinated when birds are attracted to feed on the nectar that flows from small nectaries alongside the base of the ovary.  The stamens are carried on the four petals, and these curl back after the stamens have deposited their pollen on the style.  Later, usually after the pollen has been removed, the stigma expands and becomes receptive, so the style and stigma first present the pollen to visiting birds, then receive pollen in later visits.

Two flowers of Knightia excelsa, rewarewa.  Note the bands of white pollen on the club-shaped tip of the style, and the anthers now tucked away on the coiled petals at the base of the flowers. The stigma will expand at the very tip of the style, later in the life of the flower.

The native tree Knightia excelsa (rewarewa) is also a member of the Proteaceae, and also has large clusters of flowers that function in a similar way, being pollinated by native birds like tūī.

Updates.

Leon Perrie commented: "That's amazing that Banksia integrifolia isn't in the 1988 Flora IV, given that adventive populations are now so established and widespread. The New Zealand Virtual Herbarium has over 130 specimens, most of them probably of wild plants. I think this species can definitely be put in the weedy category! I've seen it spreading prolifically in the Northland 'gumlands' (along with Hakea). Also a few spots around Palmerston North."

Mike Bayly from Melbourne tells me the plants there (subsp. integrifolia) probably don't need to have a fire to open their fruits; I guess warm dry weather is enough.  He's seen unburned plants with open fruits.

These two comments indicate I underestimated its current establishment and its potential to be an aggressive weed in my post.

Reference

Webb, C.J.; Sykes, W.R.; Garnock-Jones, P.J. 1988.  Flora of New Zealand, Vol. 4.  Botany Division, DSIR, Christchurch.