Seasonal Coffee

Common Onion Orchid

There is an extensive orchid flora of about 120 species in New Zealand seven are epiphytic with the rest terrestrial. Many are still unnamed.

'A score or more species of onion orchids range from southeast Asia to New Zealand, which probably has half a dozen taxa, 3 of which have been described.' Microtis unifolia agg., is the official name of this common onion orchid. Agg means aggregate and implies that taxonomically speaking the genus is a mess, it has so many species that are so closely related that it's really hard to sort out one from another; so that it's much simpler to call them all by the same name but also acknowledge the fact that you're talking about more than one or two species. Hence agg., an aggregate of species. [Blackberries incidentally, are similarly named Rubus fruticosus agg.] The unifolia epithet is more easily understood - one leaf - here clearly seen; and it's this leaf which gives the plant its vernacular name as it's just like a fleshy onion-leaf.

As they are not like the showy orchids that people are familiar with in florist shops, they are often overlooked in the garden. But 'what really is special about the New Zealand orchids is the ability of the majority of them to self-pollinate.' About 60per cent are self-pollinating 'a consequnece, at least to some extent, of the relative scarcity of insects in New Zealand. Another feature ... is their ability to adapt to new habitats under exotic trees.' Clearly both these factors account for the occurence of this oninon orchid growing happily here in our front garden under a rhododendron bush.

This orchid is definitely a plus for untidy gardening!

Quotations from: The Nature Guide to New Zealand Native Orchids by Ian St George, published by Godwit, 1999.

Cabbage Trees

The weather has been up and down like the proverbial yo-yo. Monday, it was a mere 10degrees, Tuesday was similar as was yesterday. Brrrr! Most unseasonal.

Today however, it has felt more like summer. A maximum of 22degrees and even some sunshine. Enough at least to set the pollinating flies and bees buzzing around these cabbage tree flowers.

Cabbage trees (Cordyline australis) are common in the landscape. They can often be found by streamsides and in farmland, preferring open sunny situations. They are frequently culitvated in gardens. Their leaves, however, do not rot down in the regular compost heap - I have a heap of branches and cabbage leaves in an unseen corner of the garden which remain undisturbed, to rot, eventually (I'm talking years here). But if I can be bothered I sometimes get a bundle of three or four fold them and tie them up with another leaf to provide good firelighters in the winter. A friend of mine uses the leaves to tie up his rubbish bags for the council to collect, but I think he has more leaves than he can use in this way.

They are the so-called 'palm' trees found growing in Torquay (UK). Once mature they are frost hardy,they have to be to grow this far south, even though Dunedin frosts are not as severe or last as long as UK ones.

Sheep and Goats

On her left Barbary sheep looked down on her from a high concrete cliff ledge. To her right was a huge park meadow. Dogs and their owners used this grassy place, the dogs running joyously wild, leash-trained city dogs enjoying their moment of release. She walked on slowly, aware that the rest of the afternoon was hers. She had been set free in this park, granted this time alone.

As she continued on down the path, she passed the elephant house. Standing on a concrete ramp, swaying, was an old lizard-coloured elephant, its trunk reaching into the air as though to pluck out invisible buns. The elephant turned in her direction, looking at her across the moat. Its ears came up like kites, then fell slap against its gray lizard cheeks. Ponderously lifting and shifting its prehistoric legs, it moved with a prisoner’s aimless deliberation back into the elephant house.

Quotation from: The Temptation of Eileen Hughes by Brian Moore.

Tree Lupins

A large colony of feral tree lupins Lupinus arboreus grow just beside the foot-path beside the beach at St CLair.

They are very fine, and their scent is heady and almost overpowering.

The air is a-buzz with bumble bees clearly attracted by the perfume. They are busy gathering nectar from the bottom of the floret. Here you can see the bee's short tongue.

And here you can see the orange pollen collected on the legs of the bee, in 'pollen baskets' as it coincidentally pollinates the lupins.

The Mangle

My ma warned us about the mangle, to stay away from it, not to mess with it. The rolls were hard but only rubber. I scratched a mark on the bottom one with the breadknife. I loved it in the kitchen – the steam and the heat – when my ma was putting the sheets through the mangle, and my da’s shirts. The sheets were shiny with huge wet bubbles and my ma put a corner up to the mangle and turned the handle and the sheet rose out of the water like a whale being caught. The water ran down the sheet and the bubbles were crushed as the sheet was pulled through the rolls and came out flat, looking like material again, the shininess all gone. Another sheet, the rubber creaked and groaned, then the rest slid through easily. She wouldn’t let me help. She only let me stand behind the washing machine and guide the sheet into the red basin. The sheet was warm and kind of solid and hard. My fingers were safe on that side. The smaller clothes came through and I caught them and put them on top of the sheets. The basin was full. She had to empty the machine now and fill it again for the nappies. The steam in the kitchen was what I really liked, and the wet on the walls.

Quotation from: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Noxious Daisy

This pretty little daisy growing oh so prettily on this wall, and it may be said, all over the place, in gardens, bits of waste ground, is on the NZ List of noxious weeds.

The Mexican daisy, Erigeron karvinskianus, has very similar flowers to the common lawn daisy Bellis perennis. It is a perennial which grows on thin, quite brittle stems, which form a thick mat. Therein lies its pestilential problem. It forms larged matted clumps which in non-urban environments smother native vegetation. As the daisy dies off it leaves large areas vulnerable to other invasive species.

It is an incredibly prolific seeder (like most Compositae). Whilst its quite easy to 'weed' it in the garden, one is on a losing wicket as unless you dig up all the roots you only encourage its spread. Naturally weeding has to be done before it seeds, which is in itself difficult as it flowers (and seeds) pretty much all year round.

And of course neighbours tend to like it because it is a pretty wee thing, and they may not realise how noxious it is. I have even seen it for sale on plant stalls at school fairs!

Ursula's Red

"A real head-turner for shady sites" says one plant guide, another calls this the finest of the Japanese Painted Ferns. I'm not going to argue. This clump grows just by the foot of some steps leading to our front door, and takes over from a clump of hellebores which have just finished flowering.

A North American website said "Though deer do like it, it can quickly produce more fronds and may show no lasting ill effects", well of course in town we don't need to worry about deer. Though, by the way, New Zealand has seven species of feral deer, including red, sika, fallow, and himalayan tahr. What were those early settlers thinking about? Well, hunting obviously - its just a shame that most introduced mammals have turend out to be such enormous pests. There was at one time moose in fiordland, but despite numerous attempts and umpteen infra-red cameras to catch them, none have been seen since the last was shot in the 1920s. The browse lines in fiordland undergrowth have convinced some that moose could still flourish. A few years ago Ken & Marg Tustin had some hairs DNA tested in Canada (click here) and apparently there really are moose lurking in the thick undergrowth.

To do it the courtesy of a full title this is, Japanese Painted Fern Ursula's Red, Athyrium nipponicum var pictum.

How to Write History

'I let it be a dull book, recording merely such uncontroversial facts as, for example, that so-and-so married so-and-so, the daughter of such-and-such who had this or that number of public honours to his credit, but not mentioning the political reasons for the marriage nor the behind-the-scene bargaining between the families. Or I would write that so-and-so died suddenly, after eating a dish of African figs, but say nothing of poison, or to whose advantage the death proved to be, unless they were supported by a verdict of the Criminal Courts.
I told no lies, but neither did I tell the truth in the sense that I mean to tell it here. ... it is myself writing as I feel, and as the history proceeds the reader will be more ready to believe that I am hiding nothing – so much being to my discredit.
This is a confidential history. But who, it may be asked, are my confidants? My answer is: it is addressed to posterity. I do not mean my great-grandchildren, or my great-great-grandchildren: I mean an extremely remote posterity. Yet my hope is that you, my eventual readers of a hundred generations ahead, or more, will feel yourselves directly spoken to, as if by a contemporary: as often Herodotus and Thucydides, long dead, seem to speak to me.'
Quotation from: I Claudius by Robert Graves

Algal Bubbles

There's been some more yukky algal muck washing up on the beach recently. But it must have been the angle of the sun, that gave the bubbles a pretty irridiscent shiny colour. Just goes to show there's beauty even in yukky things. The close-up photo does not do it justice!

Ruby Sea Lion

A bit further along the beach than previously noted, Ruby the sealion has clearly been having fun sliding down a sand shelf.

On top of the sand dunes are some playing fields, and there's a notice there to say that the young female sea-lion is called Ruby, and please keep your dogs under control, as she likes to haul out to rest during the day.

She is so well camouflaged that it's not until you are right on her that you see her. However, rest assured it was not us that caused her to lift her head, but someone walking between us and her.

Noise

Noise was driving him crazy. Let's see now, let me count the ways the noise annoys me.

Start with the inside. The refrigerator noise. Like a jet taking off in the kitchen fifty times a day. The radio. The television. Music, the tapes and records. The damn VCR. The electric shaver. The roaring gurgle of the toilet. The water coming out of the faucets. The pump. The pump was bad. The freezer. The fan. The computer's sickening hum and its chirping alarm. The clock by the bed. Tick. Tick. The energy-conserving automatic switch at 5:00pm. The flies knocking against the ceiling. The birds smashed into their own reflections in the windows. The wind. No, the wind was an outside noise. Mice in the walls. Sounded like a western town, Mice-in-the-Walls, Montana. OK that was it for the inside.

...And the birds. Do not forget the birds he told himself. The loud, repetitive bird shrills and burrs. Twittering buzzing over and over. The crickets, cicadas, cicadas with the terrible droning. ...

Beyond these maddening noises that wouldn't let him concentrate on anything, on anything at all, there was the wind. The wind up here never quit, shook the house. And the rain, the rain against the windows, on the roof. Then hail and snow and thunder. At night the howling of cats and coyotes.

Quotation from: Postcards by E. Annie Proulx

Variable Birds

Oystercatchers are quite common along the quieter beaches of the Otago Peninsula. They are not often seen on the St Claire beach - too many people!

But here are a small group. Notice the larger one is completely black, and the smaller ones are pied. I'm tempted to therefore say the larger is a Variable Oystercatcher, and the smaller ones South Island Pied Oystercatcher.

But of course, nothing is simple and Variable Oystercatchers can come in variable plumage phases, black, pied and intermediate. Though all nesting birds in Otago are black. So clearly there is one breeding individual in the group!

At any event they are fairly skittish and don't let me approach any closer. Curiously, they often fly over and past our house. Following the Leith River between the tidal mud-flats at Warrington, and the tidal mud-flats at Taieri Mouth via the ocean (and St Clair) I would think - they have a distinctive high pitched squeaky squealling noise.

Sun-bathing

There have been so few sunny days lately, that like me this blackbird decided to take advantage of a sheltered and sunny spot. I was reading, while he was busy, first with a good search for all those itchy buggy things...

then a bit of open-beaked panting to keep cool. Before settling for a quite sizz in the sun.

Coasting Hawk

Shivers began to run through me from head to toe. Behind closed eyes I saw my mother as she is when she appears to me, in her drab old persons clothes, her face hidden. 'Come to me!' I whispered. But she wold not. Stretching out her arms as a coasting hawk does, my mother began to ascend into the sky. Higher and higer she rose above me. She reached the layer of clouds, pierced it, soared on. With each mile she ascended she became younger. Her hair grew dark again, her skin fresh. The old clothes fell from her like dry leaves, revealing her blue dress with the feather in the button hole that she wears in my earliest memory of her, from the time when the world was young and all things were possible.

Quotation from: Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee

Real Tree Fern

These are huge huge tree ferns. I've written before about tree ferns, but came across these just near the Allen Theatre - part of the University campus.

They are growing in a south-facing, but very sheltered environment. A small-ish bit of basement garden. You can judge the size that they've grown to, by the door and few steps up. I'm standing on another set of steps leading to a ground-floor door, and I can't get the whole tree in one shot. The building is built into a slope and was constructed about a hundred years ago. Goodness knows when these ferns were planted.

The croziers are huge too. Right up against the office window,well only about 3feet away; I'll bet the view from the desk is awesome. Here's another spot I'll have to keep my eye on.

The Nightingale Sang in Mortlake

The van-loads of heavy goods travelled safely (and in fine weather, which is a great matter) to the cottage on Saturday, where we all slept, and Will and I made our first appearance at Mortlake Church on Sunday. We felt like “jolly squatters” yesterday, but shall be shaken into some shape by the end of a week. Poor Carry compared herself to an overboiled chicken when she woke after the fatigues of the first day’s move.

I was awoke at three o’clock on Sunday morning by a concert of a very unusual kind to my ears, and, tempted by the unwonted strains, I stole down into the garden. Day was grayly dawning in the north-east, and some light clouds floating across a pearly sky. The nightingales were sending forth interrupted capricious carols from every bush ; with a higher treble for unknown warblers, and a lower one for thrushes and blackbirds. The distant curlew kept up a running tenor accompaniment, and the more distant rookery gave out a steady bass ; with the occasional addition of the wood-pigeon’s plaintive coo-oo. Then came the echo of the cheery crow of a distant cock, the lowing of the steer, and the drowsy hum of the humble-bee. The air was fragrant with newly opening azaleas and whitethorn, and I was tempted to the brink of the little lake by the strange gambols and gyrations of the great black-backed carp. At half-past four I returned again to bed and slept till half-past nine, in comfortable instinctive unconsciousness that the whole was a reality and no early morning dream!’

Quotation from: Owen, Rev. Richard, The Life of Richard Owen by His Grandson. London: Murray, 1894. vol 1 p.384

The Vague and Unwilling Boat

There was an offshore breeze and the waves slapped the boat bottom as he sped at them. A sharp turn and he felt the boat skid. Pushed the throttle back. The stern wave roared up behind him and sloshed over the transom, swirled round his ankles and spread out in the boat. He pulled at the throttle again and the leapt forward, but sluggishly, and the water on the floor rushed toward the stern, adding its weight to Quoyle's. He looked for something to bail out the water; nothing. Turned very carefully toward the dock. The boat was vague and unwilling, for the water had altered the trim. Yet he moved forward, not afraid of sinking, only two hundred feet from the dock.

Quotation from: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.

Hooker's Seaweed Teddy-Bear

Hah! Caught in the act of hauling-out.

This Hooker Sealion, has brought a piece of seaweed to cuddle up to - like a teddy bear. Obviously the old log she (for I suspect it's the same individual that I wrote about on Wednesday)used for comfort before was not good enough.

It was almost a gallop up across the wet sand...

until she got to the first available dry patch.

Then a nice roll around, burying first her nose before ...

oh wait, where did that teddy-bear-seaweed go?

Must be on the other side...

now, she can settle down for a good snooze in the dry sand.