Winter-weathered wings - a Yellow Admiral butterfly

A happy sight - a Yellow Admiral butterfly (Kahukowhai in Maori) feeding on the blue flowers of Echium candicans.  It is just spring but the wings of this individual look worn and weathered - the Yellow Admiral are quite long-lived butterflies and some overwinter, as I imagine this one has. 

The large spot on the wings is usually yellow - hence the name - but this one looked white to me, maybe bleached by weathering.  The Yellow Admiral (Vanessa itea) is a New Zealand native also found in Australia, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.  It is a strong flier, thought to often make the crossing between Australia and New Zealand over the Tasman Sea. 

This one was taking its time on a rather wind-flattened flowering stalk, visiting the little blue flowers and having a good drink with its long black tongue.  So I was able to get close up.

Showing the rather hairy face and body and warm colours of the upper wings - the under wings are a duller and more intricate pattern, but the position and lighting meant that they cannot be seen in these photos.

While I have plenty of nectar bearing flowers in my garden, providing food for the butterflies, I don't have the food that is required by their caterpillars - native or introduced nettle plants.  Not the most welcome addition to a garden!  But people are planting them to help restore the populations of Yellow Admirals, which are under threat from introduced wasps, insecticides, loss of habitat - the usual suspects.  Perhaps I had better source some nettles...

Fresh colours of spring

To me, the fresh new foliage of deciduous trees is one of the delights of spring.  In Hataitai Park there is a mixture of exotic and native trees and together they make a particularly lovely display - soft clouds of emerging leaves in bright green and amber contrast with the dark green evergreens and slender silvery shapes of the trunks and branches.

This park adjoins Wellington's Town Belt so is part of this precious swathe of green which provides a setting for sporting venues and casual recreational activities, and even for filming - a segment in the first film of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was filmed in the Town Belt.

Plant awareness problems - a gruesome sight

Oh dear.  What were they thinking?  I still get a shock when I see plants treated like this.

"Landscaping" seen outside a local fast food outlet - ranks of Astelia chathamica planted way too closely to start with, then later chopped back into stumpy clumps.

Astelia chathamica is a popular garden plant, often described as "architectural" because of the drama of its long flax-like leaves with their gorgeous silvery sheen, grouped in a large imposing clump.  Alas, it is often planted when still small, a tidy fan of silver and soft green.  And we tend to plant allowing for things as they are, not planning adequately for what they will grow into.  I have certainly made that mistake. 

If the initial planting is made to fill the space in a pleasing way, then things will likely get too crowded quite quickly as the plants grow.  Some plants will have to be removed to make room to allow those that remain to grow naturally.  Pruning - cutting plants so they grow more as we want them to - is another way of managing plant growth.  But if we want healthy and happy plants, then planting and pruning should take account of how the plant grows. 

This is what Astelia chathamica, given the chance, will grow to look like - a more upright one...

Or a more spreading one...

They are big, bold, and eye-catching.  These plants are growing in the Otari Native Botanic Garden in Wellington.  They are in mixed plantings and take centre stage. 

The leaves are long, dramatic, elegant, and somewhat messy.  Cutting them back stops them from growing and they will ever be stumps - I think of them as being like partially amputated arms.  If allowed, new leaves will grow from the base, and look very odd as they straggle above their chopped back predecessors.  What a mess - and I am guessing that the chopping back was an attempt to "tidy" them!

I have a theory that many people don't even think of plants as living things, let alone recognise them as critical for our survival.  And not noticing how things grow leads to mistakes like this kind of pruning.  I regard this kind of mutilation as a gruesome sight, and a reminder of how mindless we can be.  While in this case it is really just an aesthetic issue, such mindlessness can actually be devastating for the living world around us.

Ephemeral beauty - the spring blossom of Prunus 'Awanui'

The blush pink blossom of Prunus 'Awanui' is out at present, defying the changeable weather and delighting me with its ephemeral beauty - rather romanticised by my treatment of this image.

This lovely flowering cherry was selected by New Zealander Keith Adams who found it amongst a collection of cherries he had planted on his land.  At the time he ran a nursery, and the property was by Awanui Street in New Plymouth, hence the name.  It seems to be a robust tree, and has quite horizontal branches, giving it a graceful appearance.  It is cloaked with flowers well before the leaves appear.  There is a lightness about the tree in blossom even though the flowering is profuse. 

As the linked article describes, Keith Adams has lived a very full and interesting life.  In contrast to the delicacy of the cherry blossom he discovered is the image of his expeditions to find tropical rhododendrons (Vireyas) in dense jungles.  This reflected his love of the plants and, it would seem, his adventurous nature.  In the article he is described as asserting a principled attitude to collecting - taking seed or cuttings only and definitely not taking the plant.  Admirable, I think.  Desecration of plant populations has been a legacy of some plant collectors.

For me the pleasure of seeing this lovely tree is somehow enhanced by the unexpected associations conjured up by reading about its discoverer.

Red alert - Kaka beak (Clianthus) - brilliant and endangered

Spring is such a time of contrasts.  It has been wet, windy and grey for a couple of days but when I visited Otari at the beginning of the week it was bright and colourful - and there was an arresting sight.

Along a trellis fence, a sprawling shrub of Kaka beak (Clianthus, or Kowhai ngutukaka in Maori) was covered with dangling clusters of its distinctive bright red flowers.  Their claw-like shape has been likened to the beak of a parrot, and the kaka is a native parrot - hence the name.

Appreciated as a garden plant, it has become very endangered in the wild - introduced plants and animals compete with it and consume it.

Of the two species, in the wild C. puniceus was found only on Moturemu Island on the Kaipara Harbour, and C. maximus was found mostly around Lake Waikaremoana.  The number of C. maximus plants was down to 153 in 2005! 

The kaka beak plant has been the focus of conservation efforts.  Plants were fenced to protect them from browsing animals and replanting was undertaken.  Local hapu, with the Department of Conservation, established Nga Tipu a Tane ki Waikaremoana nursery at Te Kura o Waikaremoana School, in the Lake Waikaremoana area.  Along the East Cape local schools were involved in roadside planting.  Animal repellant sprays were developed and used to protect plants.  Fortunately it produces seed which is long-lived, germinating when land where it has fallen is disturbed.  It also copes with poor soil - as a member of the legume family it can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, via the symbiotic root bacteria within the root nodules, producing nitrogen compounds that help the plant to grow.

I don't know what the situation is today, but DoC information suggests that kaka beak is still growing on Moturemu Island in the Kaipara harbour, and at several sites on the East Cape, in Te Urewera National Park, near Wairoa, and in Boundary Stream Mainland Island in Hawkes Bay. 

When we humans jeopardise the future of living things which we can see and appreciate, we can be reminded of our impact.  That is much more difficult if the endangered plant or animal is shy or subtle - and in New Zealand we have a great many in that situation.  So this plant is something of a conservation alert for us all, in its eye-catching brilliance.