Subtle grace - silver tussock and shore spurge

With a quiet beauty but resilient enough to cope with the tough coastal conditions - two NZ native plants in a roadside planting down by the beach at Island Bay.

Silver tussock is Poa cita or wi.  It belongs to a large family of grasses, many used as pasture - a famous relative is Kentucky bluegrass.  This New Zealander is a tussock with dense tufts of fine silvery-green foliage, upright but flowing in habit.  Poa cita thrives in dry and difficult terrain.  I don't think anything grazes it - studies of Poa cita grassland in the South Island seem to suggest that sheep graze on non-native plants/weeds and actually improve things for the native plants, which thrive better in the grazed areas.  It shows us how important it is to test our ideas - I would have thought protecting the Poa cita grasslands from sheep would serve them better.  And I am sure that this is a finding specific to these arid zones where the less palatable Poa cita is being encroached by tasty introduced weeds.  In most other settings, grazing by introduced animals is pretty disastrous. 

Shore (or sea) spurge, or sand milkweed, is Euphorbia glauca or waiuatua - plants are often blessed with many names!  I love its colours -  soft grey green to blue green with reddish stems and tiny flowers surrounded by curious dark red/maroon cup-like structures.  It has a much more limited distribution - coastal cliffs, banks, sand dunes and rocky lake shore scarps. It is in decline - coastal developments, competition from introduced weeds, being eaten and trampled by introduced animals like sheep and possums...no help from the grazers for it.  But it has finally been recognised as an attractive plant for gardens as well as for amenity use (when Euphorbias were fashionable I used to humph about how it had been overlooked.)  This bit of human disruption might be helpful.

So - stories of survival in a small amenity planting, enriching the pleasure of what we see.

Shorter days - sunset seen from my office

We humans are light responsive creatures.  Some of us are more sensitive to changes in sunlight hours and day length than others.  Although I am fortunate and not badly affected by seasonal change, I do find the shorter days less attractive - and there is still a month to go before it is the shortest day, not to mention that winter hasn't really begun yet.  But then, it isn't so bad being inside when the weather is stormy and getting colder, and the winds do shape dramatic displays of rapidly changing cloud patterns.  These clouds caught the sunset in a brief display which lit up the sky, and I was able to catch the picture from my office window.

The lights on the tower beside the concourse to the stadium were redundant.  Nature's light show energised me as I returned to my work.  I find that even short moments of connection with the wonders of the world around us can be very sustaining.

Weather-worn but still sunny in autumn - chrysanthemum flowers

Brightening a corner by the path, some pale yellow escapees from my office - bought in one of those pots of tightly packed little chrysanthemum plants that produce an abundant flowering but then are pretty spent, and are not intended for the garden.  But they can happily grow on, given the chance.

And although they are a bit battered and worn, there is a rather defiant brightness to these flowers which are thriving despite the cold and wind and rain.

Muehlenbeckia astonii - food and shelter for a New Zealand katydid

I have written before about Muehlenbeckia astonii - one of a number of our native plants which has a divaricating pattern of growth where the repeated branching of the stems at wide angles creates a zig-zag thicket.  It is a wonderfully weird looking tangle of a shrub with wiry coppery brown branchlets, tiny heart-shaped leaves and little starry white flowers.  It is deciduous, so perhaps it was an autumnal thinning of the little leaves that allowed me to recently see something I had not noticed before...

A katydid! 

At first it was barely visible, although it is clear enough in this relatively close shot.  In fact, I counted eight katydids dotted amidst the shrub.  But they were so well hidden that you couldn't see them readily in photographs which I took from the distance required to include them all. 

This was a surprise.  Katydids are very good at munching their way through various introduced plants - my roses have been a prime target.  I have regarded them as attractive but a pest.  I hadn't even thought that the katydids I see in the garden might be native insects.  But Caedicia simplex, to give the proper name, is a New Zealander belonging to the family Tettigoniidae which numbers more than 6,400 species and is found on all continents except Antarctica.  The Maori name, I have learned, is Kiki Pounamu. 

Excellent camouflage is a feature of many katydid species.  Somehow, despite its size, the angular legs of this katydid blended with the angles of the branches, and the bright green leaf-like body (very well hidden on rose plants) blended with the massed effect of tiny green leaves.  The shrub offered added protection - a protective zig-zag wall.  I couldn't reach any of them. 

If finding it on the Muehlenbeckia was a surprise, the behaviour of the katydid was not.

Eating!  Not a pleasing sight, even if it does look very pretty with the backlight emphasising the patterns on its wings and exoskeleton. 

A closer crop shows this more clearly.

One theory about divarication is that it was an adaptation to protect leaves from the moa, an extinct very large plant eating flightless bird.  However, it is thought more likely that divarication evolved in response to harsh weather conditions, protecting the plant against desiccation and wind damage - Muehlenbeckia astonii is a tough coastal plant.  But the divarication and tiny leaves are no protection against small plant eaters.  In my reading this plant was described as an important host for insects, which in turn become fodder for native birds and lizards.  And deep-rooted Muehlenbeckia astonii can outlive them all - up to 80 years.

Transient beauty - autumn leaves on a flowering cherry tree

Soft golden-pink autumn leaves dangling in the early autumn sunshine - a flowering cherry in the Botanic Gardens, again in fine display.   Cherry blossom is celebrated for its transient beauty.  The beauty of the autumn colour is also a fleeting pleasure, and a reminder of impermanence.

When the leaves are blown by gentle winds, the fluttering colour reminds me of images of prayer flags in the Himalayas.  Perhaps it is a rather fanciful notion, but I enjoy the idea of them blessing us and the ground they land on.