Southerly storm clouds dispelling the sunshine

We have been having mild weather - we have just come through the warmest June on record for New Zealand, part of a disturbing sequence of warm weather records.  But some wintery cold arrived yesterday and even though I don't like being cold I rather welcomed it.

A southerly cloud front over Baring Head and advancing towards Wellington's south coast.  It quickly dulled what had been a sunny morning, chilled us, rained heavily, and even sprinkled a little snow on the Orongorongos - the lovely crinkly hills seen in the distance.  

Covering the ground - Geranium traversii and Acaena inermis 'Purpurea'

A calm and sunny Sunday (with a forecast of a stormy week to come), meant I enjoyed being outside tending my rather neglected plants - not intentional neglect I hasten to add, and they are chosen to fit the circumstances.  In other words, they are survivors.

We have been having a mild and warmer than average winter and the unwanted plants ("weeds") in my garden have been growing very well indeed with the happy mix - for them - of warmth and plenty of rain.  Recent reports from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are yet another climate wake-up call - "May 2014 marked the 39th consecutive May and the 351st consecutive month (more than 29 years) with a global temperature above the 20th Century average ... the last below-average global temperature for May occurred in 1976 and the last below-average temperature for any month occurred in February 1985.”  In May the average temperatures across the oceans reached a record monthly high of 0.59C above the 20th Century average of 16.3C.  Even more troubling than the surface warming of the ocean is the documented warming of the deep ocean.  Rises in atmospheric and ocean temperatures that look small actually have very big repercussions.  So if we humans keep doing what we have been doing up till now...well, profuse weed growth isn't going to be the issue.

But the weeding got me to thinking about another issue too - the fine line between plants being useful, in this case as ground covers, and becoming invasive, taking over the territory.  The plant in question is the pretty Chatham Island geranium - Geranium traversii.

I'm not sure where it came from, maybe it stowed away on the pot of another native plant.  It just turned up, establishing itself in minimal soil over a tangle of old roots - in its natural habitat it grows on cliffs, rocky crevices, compacted sand - a real survivor.  It grew densely, sheltering the soil surface from drying and leaf litter from being blown away - conditions for soil to improve and new plants to get established.  Enter a small cutting of purple bidibid or piripiri - Acaena inermis 'Purpurea.'

The geranium has been cut back many times, it's a big thicket of a plant growing down onto a path.  The bidibid is gradually forming a mat.  But what are those green plants doing amidst the purple?

Seedlings of Geranium traversii!  Lots and lots of them with the characteristic lobed leaves, though not yet as silver-haired as the older leaves on the mother plant.  When the books say Geranium traversii self-seeds readily, they are not kidding.  A very long flowering season helps the seed production - the flowers persist now, in mid-winter.  I do enjoy the silvery-green or grey-green leaves, and it holds its own against the conditions - wind, wet or dry.  But I also enjoy the tiny feathery purple and silver-purple leaflets of the bidibid.  Its rhizomatous roots spread and it can form a vigorous mat - but the roots of the geranium seedlings are penetrating this.  If I let the seedlings grow, I would have a dense mat of geranium and nothing else would get through.  They don't naturally occur together at all, but I think they look great together.  So in order to have this pleasure, some delicate weeding is required.  Anyone want Geranium traversii seedlings?

Bumblebee feeding on rosemary - not elegant, but effective

Our lovely rosemary plant seems to be in flower most of the year and it is very attractive to bees.  So although it is midwinter, and not very lovely weather, the bees are still to be seen flying from flower to flower to feed on the nectar.  The bumblebee is rather round and very hairy, and does not seem as fast moving as the honey bee.  To me it is a slightly comical looking little beast, rather like the bee a small child might draw, and it does not seem very aerodynamic in design.  The name fits - it bumbles around.  But when it comes to accessing the flowers it can manoeuvre just as well as its more sleek counterparts.

Caught in action, its wings a blur - a bumble bee is feeding from a rosemary flower in a rather awkward spot.  Maybe it can't do elegant hovering like a hummingbird but it is an impressive feat, and it is getting the food all the same.  So here's to bumbling along - maybe we can find our way to look after this good earth even if we don't look all that fit for purpose.

A golden time traveller - Ginkgo biloba

Glowing in Wellington Botanic Garden on a dark and grey early winter's day, a "living fossil."  Ginkgo biloba, or the ginkgo tree, is the one living representative of the genus Ginkgo, unusual nonflowering plants which were first seen in the Permian era 270 million years ago - predating the dinosaurs.

It is only found in the wild in China, but the ginkgo is grown around the world because of its beauty, disease and insect resistance, and resilience.  These qualities also mean that it is very long-lived, with claims that one tree was 2,500 years old.  There are ginkgo trees planted and thriving on Lambton Quay, a main street in central Wellington, in vivid contrast to the buildings and traffic.

It is a dioecious plant, with separate sexes.  Only male trees have been planted in the city - a very sensible choice because there is a problem with the fruit borne by the female trees.  The seeds are enclosed in a light yellow brown fleshy outer layer - quite pretty and not an issue, until they fall and are walked on or otherwise disrupted, releasing the smell of butyric acid - the pong of rancid butter (or worse!).  The flesh also contains allergenic compounds which can cause dermatitis when handled, but this does not deter people from harvesting the seeds.  They are eaten as a delicacy - but not too many, as they contain a compound which is toxic (I have read that it interferes with vitamin B6 absorption - not so good.)  Talk about having to work for your treat!  Ginkgo is also used medicinally.  I prefer to feast on it with my eyes. 

The distinctive and rather tough leaves cope well with Wellington's winds - bright green in spring they retain their freshness through summer until they turn gold in late autumn/early winter.  Their fan shape and the radiating veins are reminiscent of the pinnae of the maidenhair fern, and the ginkgo is sometimes called the maidenhair tree although that evokes a rather more delicate quality than is the reality. 

The remaining leaves on this tree made a profuse display of gold, even though there was already a thick carpet of fallen leaves.  A gorgeous blast from the very very distant past.

Winter warmth - Aloe arborescens in flower

Aloe arborescens is an impressive sprawling succulent plant which thrives in difficult locations, here covering steep banks on Oriental Parade in Wellington, beside the harbour and close to the central city.  It is also known as Torch Aloe.  The massed upright racemes of tubular orange-red flowers do seem to glow in the winter sun, and are somewhat like a dense array of torches.

In addition to providing a warming sight, the flowers provide a rich source of nectar and pollen for birds and insects - some tui were feeding on these ones, but I didn't catch any this time with my camera.

Originally from southern Africa, this aloe is a very successful plant here in Wellington.  The rosettes of spiny bluish green leaves create a dense cover and an "architectural" display.  They store water and resist desiccation by our harsh winds.  They are also fearsome enough to have been used to create protective hedges around kraals - enclosures for domestic stock. The tooth-shaped spines on the leaves are actually not very sharp but the branching spreading plant is a rather dense tangled profusion, a good protective barrier.  And the racemes (flower spikes), provide a long lasting display as the individual flowers open progressively upwards.  A glorious but also pretty messy profusion, a very attractive winter sight.

The pestiferous (and also non-native to New Zealand) wasps agreed, alas.

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.