Melanie is teaching us to identify trees at the moment as we’ll need to be able to tell them apart later on when we get to finishing off the nest cards. Melanie wants to know what types of trees the birds are nesting in to see if there are any patterns.
The Chatham’s have a fabulous flora, much of which is endemic, which means that it only lives here. Chatham Island Forget-me-nots are probably the best known ones and are widely cultivated on the mainland. One even decorated the top of my birthday cake in Dunedin before I left home!
Chatham Island Forget-me-not:
Firstly Melanie introduced us to the Chatham Island Akeake. They were once used for both firewood and fence posts all over the Chathams and apparently their wood smells like curry when it’s fresh. The ones that we’re interested in tend to be dead and full of holes which make great nests for the robins, tomtits and starlings alike.
Chatham Island Akeake:
The Ngaio trees are flowering, so it’s incredibly easy to tell them apart from everything else. Their tiny white spotted flowers litter the paths like confetti at the moment. Even if you can’t see the flowers, Ngaio trunks can be quite twisty and the bottoms of them remind me of wrinkly elephant’s feet.
Ngaio tree flower:
The kawakawa are also easy to tell as their leaves are very round and heart-shaped. We made tea out of these one evening and none of us thought that it tasted of much. An hour or so later though I was rushing out of my sleeping bag to “water” a bush, so I reckon that it is quite diuretic and haven’t tried it since!
Kawakawa leaves
My very favorite tree on the mainland is the lancewood and I was just delighted to be introduced to the Chatham Island Lancewood and equally delighted with its Maori name; Hoho. The young of the Hoho doesn’t have that prickly, gangly, juvenile phase which makes the mainland ones so distinctive. This is why I hadn’t even recognized it as a lancewood. This little bit of learning is changing the bush in my mind from a bunch of bird containing greenery into separate and recognizable individual plants.
Chatham Island Lancewood
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