Photographic play & the beauty of waiuatua, Euphorbia glauca

I love the colours of waiuatua - Euphorbia glauca, New Zealand sea spurge.  It is often included in amenity plantings along Wellington's south coast, so even though it is endangered ("in decline") in nature, we can readily enjoy its beauty - this photo was taken by the car parking area at Princess Bay.

Looking down on the blue green leaves and the red/purple flower structures - they contrast strongly, but the overall effect is quite gentle.  I have further softened this with the magic of digital postprocessing in Lightroom by reducing mid-tone contrast using the "clarity" slider. 

A huge number of photos are taken and shared these days - capable cameras are readily at hand, able to do all kinds of things for us.  Even though maybe quite a proportion of the photos taken are quick snapshots, and are processed using presets, I nevertheless appreciate the way that photography involves some degree of attention, awareness, experimentation and discovery.  I find that taking and processing images can be meditative and it can be playful.  All of it deepens my appreciation of the complexity and interest in aspects of the natural world which can otherwise be so easily overlooked.  And it strikes me that if we slow down, take time, and really savour the process, photography can be a delightful kind of awareness practice.

Lilies everywhere - New Zealand style

At this time of year - late spring/early summer - rengarenga or rock lilies (Arthropodium cirratum) seem to be everywhere - masses of little white flowers announce their presence, lighting up the often difficult places where they tend to be planted - they cope with a wide range of conditions.  The clumps of long mid-green leaves can look handsome in their own right, if they haven't been feasted upon by slugs and snails.  But the sheer profusion of flowers is something else.

Close-up you can see that they are not just white - the stamens are white and purple, and have yellow bristly brush-like anther tails, and the buds have a purplish flush.

It is endemic to New Zealand.  The significance of rengarenga to Maori as outlined in this RNZIH paper has been considerable, a food source also used for medicinal, spiritual and other cultural purposes. 

From a wee lily to a tree lily...the flowers are again small but large in number. 

Ti kouka, ti, or cabbage tree (Cordyline australis) is another endemic New Zealand plant.  The distinctive spiky tree shape is seen on farm paddocks, on the margins of bush and in gardens through the country, although it has been decimated in some areas, especially Northland, because of a disease appropriately named Sudden Decline.  Fortunately there seems to be a lessening in its severity in recent years.

Looking down on a mature tree in flower...

And looking up...

The flowers are sweetly scented and followed by numerous berries.  The native pigeon, an impressive large bird, loves to feed on them. 

One of the largest tree lilies in the world, it is also very resilient.  Ti does well as a coloniser on bare ground and is often used in restoration plantings.  It has a deep taproot that holds fast to the ground, fire resistant bark, and is easily propagated from seeds or cuttings, even bark cuttings.  Ti has also flourished in gardens in the Northern Hemisphere and has acquired the name "Torquay Palm" in its travels - Torquay in the south of England is a long way from home! 

But despite attempts to appropriate it, we tend to regard it as an iconic tree, a symbol of New Zealand. 

A world of roses in my backyard - China, Charleston, Paris, Reunion, Ispahan

Well, the wind has been roaring, but that has not defeated roses in my back yard.  To live here they have to be tough, and in this difficult spot I have a number of old-fashioned roses - chosen because of their more informal beauty, their perfume, and their robust constitutions.  They require (and get) little attention apart from admiration.  They have also travelled a very long way to end up on this windy Wellington hillside, and thinking of their distant origins is one of the delights I enjoy with these plants.

We start in Charleston, South Carolina, where a rice planter named John Champney was given a China rose, Old Blush, by his neighbour Philippe Noisette.  Champney crossed the repeat flowering China rose with the autumn-flowering musk rose Rosa moschata, producing Champney's Pink Cluster, regarded as the first of the Noisette roses.  It was repeat flowering - a quality that breeders sought, vigorous and scented, and a very good parent rose for breeding.  In turn, Philippe sent some seedlings from this rose to his brother Louis in Paris, and he introduced this one, Blush Noisette, in 1817.  (This is the usual account, but in his book Classic Roses Peter Beales has as a footnote an account, written in 1846, of a breeder in Long Island being the source of the Noisette, and sending seedlings to a French nurseryman in Rouen where they were sold before Noisette's rose turned up.  It was suggested that Philippe Noisette may have acquired his seedlings from Long Island somehow.  Who knows?) The lovely clusters of little blush pink scented blooms begin to open in early spring and continue till late autumn.  It is a healthy tall shrub that can be trained to climb if you want it to.

From the Middle East came the Damask roses, natural crosses between the species roses Rosa moschata, Rosa gallica and others.  They were brought back to Europe by Crusaders of the 12th and 13th centuries. This group of roses has strongly perfumed petals and varied growth and flowering patterns.  Ispahan is a summer flowering Damask, producing generous displays of warm pink flowers over a period of 6-8 weeks.  Ispahan is named after the Iranian city (Isfahan) famed for its beautiful gardens.  Rose history is always somewhat contentious it seems, but it appears that this rose was bred in Persia, now Iran, in the early 1800's.  There are descriptions of roses like it growing in large numbers on hillsides between Isfahan and Shiraz.  What a glorious sight that must be!  Ispahan makes a large cheerful bush, the roses strongly scented and lasting well.

And from the island of Reunion (once called Ile de Bourbon) in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar, came the Bourbon roses.  They are thought to have arisen from a cross between the Autumn Damask and the China rose Old Blush.  The director of the island's botanical gardens sent seeds to his friends in France including M. Jacques, head gardener to the Duc d'Orleans, who recognised the new strain of roses and named them Bourbon roses.  They are repeat flowering vigorous shrubs, and many crosses were made in French nurseries yielding beautiful varieties very popular in gardens at that time.

Rose Honorine de Brabant belongs to this lovely family. It has wonderfully eccentric stripes, splashes and speckles of crimson or purple on pale lilac pink. It makes a healthy strong growing shrub that can be trained as a climber.

(It appears that the first Bourbon rose might have been introduced to India, as it was described growing in the Botanical Garden in Calcutta, now Kolkata, before seed was sent to France. Rose history demonstrates again how it is rather full of intrigue and mystery!)

Dynamic weather - cloud appreciation time

Over the whole country we have been having capricious spring weather, with hail storms and strong winds causing some havoc.  For Island Bay it has been pretty much things as usual - in other words, dynamic!  The weather forecast yesterday suggested we would be hit by showers and hail, but the morning was bright and sunny.  A bank of clouds seemed to be rolling in from the south, and behind Taputeranga was a line of cumulus clouds, with a towering cumulonimbus providing some drama.

Not only do they look dramatic, cumulonimbus clouds are associated with dramatic weather - thunderstorms, lightning, severe wind gusts, hail.  But although there was some rain in the distance, conditions were bright and sunny - not the stormy weather that was anticipated.  It was only very late in the day when the clouds became menacing.

In the area of bright cloud over the Orongorongos there were flashes of lightning.  I don't know what their correct designation would be, but the heavy storm clouds seemed to fill the sky, and dwarfed the very large cruise liner heading out past Baring Head.  In the mist of the rain you could hardly see the Interislander ferry or the plane up in the clouds. 

Now, that's the weather we expected!

Colourful spring foliage in Auckland's Eden Garden

Here in Wellington our trees are shaped and pruned and often stunted by wind.  In Auckland trees have a much easier time.  With less wind they tend to grow very quickly to a good size.  On a brief visit to Auckland this weekend I was delighted by the trees in their fresh spring growth.  A particularly good place to see beautiful trees that don't do well on Wellington's south coast is the lovely Eden Garden.  It was created by volunteers who started planting over forty years ago in an abandoned quarry by Mt Eden, a volcanic cone.  The site is steep and rocky but (I presume) blessed with good volcanic soil. 

Eden Garden is a memorial garden, and when I visit I go to see my father's tree.  His tree is in a glade - difficult to photograph but a special setting. 

The leaves of Japanese maple, backlit by bright sunlight, are glorious in crimson and green.  The pink colour is due to the leaves of the Toon tree - Toona sinensis.  They are this improbable pale shade when they first emerge in spring.  Greens of camellias, magnolias and rhododendrons - especially vireyas - provide a rich contrast, as do some lovely mature native trees.  Japanese maples are a particular treat for me to see.  Their foliage is wind sensitive and just when it emerges and is at its most tender, the equinoxial gales are whipping around our place in Island Bay.  But not here in Eden garden, enclosed and sheltered by the old quarry.

The sight of these colours was irresistable to my trigger happy shutter finger - digital photography allows you to take too many photos. 

Here, even brighter backlit leaves glow like the colourful glass of stained glass windows.

And where the light is softer on the steep path down to Duncan Dale, the reds and greens of the Japanese maples quietly intensify each other. 

Bliss!

Long after the fire, Happy Valley hillsides turn from grey to pink

The Cape Province is only a small area of South Africa but it has a wonderful range of endemic plants (plants found only there.)  Many have been introduced and flourished elsewhere, one perhaps too well - Senecio glastifolius or pink ragwort, a pretty perennial daisy bush which appears on Wellington hillsides each spring in ribbons of purplish pink.  It is bright and cheerful and the bees love it.

It took me a while to notice that it might appear profusely in one place for a year or two but then the show of pink would dwindle, only to spring up somewhere else.  And that somewhere else would be another area of disturbed ground - a building site, a pathway, a place where trees had been cleared, and in this case a place where the shrubby cover had been burned in a scrub fire back in February 2013.

In the first spring after the fire I was expecting to see pink.  No - just some green grass covering the soil.  But now in October 2014, the second spring after the fire, there is a flourishing of pink particularly where the fire did the most damage. 

A reminder of the fire near Owhiro Bay, on the Happy Valley hills.

And now, looking at the affected area but from further away (Tawatawa Ridge, on the city to sea walkway with a view across to the Happy Valley hills towards Te Kopahou) - a colourful if weedy view - pink ragwort and golden gorse, contrasting with the rich greens of native shrubs. 

Both these weeds seem to be more problematic in other areas of New Zealand, but appear to be less overwhelming in windy Wellington where they provide shelter for native plants which then gradually take over.  I know that is the case for prickly nitrogen fixing gorse - a formidable protective "nursery plant."  And it appears that pink ragwort does not completely dominate for long.  But even at home in South Africa it is said to be something of a pest because of the way it can take hold in disturbed ground.  Being a successful plant unfortunately often also means being designated a "weed" - whether you have been introduced from afar or not. 

If a weed is disrupting an ecosystem or displacing the plants that originated in a particular place, it seems reasonable to want to conserve and nurture the plants and ecosystems that are threatened.  It is not always easy!  But along the Tawatawa Ridge walk, you can see New Zealand shrubs and ferns growing amidst the thorny gorse and the purplish pink daisies of Senecio glastifolius.

Buff-tailed bumblebees in pink and blue.

Spring weather is always a feast of changes and today we have been blessed by sunshine and stillness, with barely any wind.  Favourable conditions for plants and animals alike.  More and more flowers are opening, colouring the garden.  The tall Echium spikes are still blue with their little flowers, there is an abundance of pink flowers on my rose-scented pelargoniums, and buff-tailed bumblebees came out in force.

No doubt appreciating the kinder weather and the plentiful supply of food, they buzzed from flower to flower, sometimes dipping their heads in so far that all you could see was their little buff bottoms.

We are encouraged to plant food for bees whose job as pollinators is so important for our food supply.  Fashions in gardening come and go, but failing to include flowering plants is a loss for all of us.

Little purple treasures in the spring garden - heartsease and Iris innominata

The burgeoning of new growth can make springtime a bit overwhelming - all these visual delights!  It is also a time of reckoning - have my little treasures survived the rigours of life in the windy coastal site where I live? 

So far, so good.  A particular delight right now are some lovely purple Iris innominata flowers - my plant came from Hokonui Alpines, a special nursery in the South Island.

A much less sumptuous purple flower, and much more abundant, is heartsease - Viola tricolor - from which the much larger garden pansy was bred.  This is a herb which has been used for a variety of medicinal purposes and the flower is edible too - a charming garnish.  It might be small but it is very persistent.  I bought a plant from a herb nursery about thirty years ago.  A constant companion since then, it travels with me, seeding enough to mean it pops up wherever I and my plants have gone, but never to the point of being a pest. 

The self-fertile flowers can be purple, blue, yellow or white and from that one plant I have quite a mix.  I think of it as having a very cheerful perky presence.  It has lots of other names which suggest it has that impact on other people too - they include: heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, love-in-idleness, call-me-to-you, johnny jump up.  A little wild pansy with quite an impact!

One Wellington day - spring winds, god beams and rainbows

It started with a ferocious northerly, beginning to fade in the morning after a very stormy night.  As the clouds began to break, rays of light shone through in "god beams" over Island Bay. 

Then the clouds and mist cleared quite quickly, and the sky became a bright forget-me-not blue.  Looking towards the South Island a rainbow made a brief appearance.  A really lovely day - for a few hours. 

Then...

ominous clouds from the south, heavy and dark, with raggedy rain-bearing edges.

The wind picked up, the clouds advanced quickly and kept shifting and changing, creating an almost spout-like formation.

It was as if the spout-like formation was extruding a rainbow to snare the Interislander ferry passing by.

The ferries are used to dealing with the stormy weather of the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands.  And spring weather in Wellington is indeed very dynamic.

Sure enough - there was more to come - a darkness appearing to subdue the bright mist and the rainbow.

The light faded as the sun began to set, a pinkness apparent in distant low cloud beyond Baring Head.  The rainbow reasserted itself - the rain had broken although the clouds still had a threatening aura.

The colours intensified the way they do when the sun is very low.  And then the light show faded away. 

The winds were settling.  Knowing Wellington weather we anticipated a lovely clear day after the storm.  And it was.

Red & green - Kaka beak (kowhai ngutukaka) and shotgun conservation

Red and green stand for "stop" and "go" - pretty much the state of affairs for the attractive NZ native shrub, Clianthus maximus or Clianthus puniceus, known as the kaka beak or kowhai ngutukaka because the shape of the flowers evokes the beak shape of the kaka, a New Zealand parrot.  Red light - even though it is enjoyed as a garden plant, the survival of the kaka beak in the wild is seriously threatened.  Green light - people are trying to save it.  The Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust (click to find out more) have come up with some creative tactics - and the use of shotguns is not for killing anything, but to access otherwise inaccessible places, away from the pests who find this shrub so palatable.

At Otari Native Botanic Garden here in Wellington there are many kaka beak plants and they are out in full splendour.  In dappled shade, the low spreading branches of this plant are fresh with bright green leaves and heavy with dangling crimson flowers.

Out in a brightly-lit open space more red and green is to be seen - at the back on a trellis fence covered with kaka beak and in the foliage of small shrubs framing another kaka beak plant.  The spear-like silvery leaves of the Astelias provide a sharp contrast.

Some people think New Zealand native plants are dull - maybe they just aren't looking.