Journal Number 109
August 2008

THE TYPE LOCALITY

The Seventy Mile Bush and Microtis longifolia
By Ian St George

In 1885 William Colenso described Microtis longifolia [1].

The chief difference between this and M. unifolia, he claimed, was the late flowering season
(February and March - Forster had found M. unifolia in September on Long Island, Queen
Charlotte Sound) along with "several (other) characters" for which the reader was referred
to his not entirely helpful description.

In 1906 Thomas Cheeseman included all the previously described Microtis in New Zealand
in Microtis porrifolia, including Colenso's M. longifolia. He commented, "There appear to
be differences in the shape and size of the calli on the lip, the shape of its extremity, and
the extent to which the margin is crisped." [2] Subsequent authors have taken a similar
stance, including M. longifolia as a synonym of M. unifolia.

COLENSO'S DESCRIPTION

Microtis longifolia, sp. nov.
Plant variable in size, and in the number of its flowers; tall, erect, 1 foot 3 inches to 2 feet 3 inches
high; leaf solitary terete tubular, with 3 longitudinal furrows from base to tip, 2-3 inches longer than
scape, and on open oppressed bract at base 1-2 inches long. Scape stout, 2-3 lines diameter, cylindrical
below sub-angular above; raceme 3-6 inches long, many flowered (25-40), flowers pedicelled, small,
distant, 2-6 lines apart; bracts 2 lines long, broadly ovate-acuminate, transversely rugulose and decurrent;
upper sepal boat-shaped, sub-cucullate, acute; lower pair largely divergent sub-revolute, obtuse; petals
free, recurved, obtuse; lip oblong, laciniate or sub-lobed, much crisped at margins; tip broad and bifid;
the two lumps at base very large, dark green, smooth and shining; the lump near tip tuberculate or
crisped, commonly in two ridges; ovarium stout, 3 lines long, finely papillose, flat beneath, very turgid
and gibbous above.

Hab. Skirts of woods near Norsewood, County of Waipawa; flowering in February and March; 1883-84: W.C.

Obs. A species allied to the common M. porrifolia, but differing in several characters (vide descript.
supra); and also from its flowering in the autumn. It is nearly allied to some of the Australian species.

The type specimen is in WELT (24277), collected at "Norsewood".

The Seventy Mile Bush

The great forest stretching from Masterton to Norsewood was called the Seventy Mile Bush
(or often the Forty Mile Bush - or just the "Bush"). "The Maori name for the forest is Te Tapere
Nui o Whatonga. This forest was a huge green cloak with many species of trees including
towering rimu, totara, northern rata as well as many ferns, shrubs, climbers and herbs, all
living under the mantle of Tane-Atua of the forest.

The forest was alive with the sounds of the many different species of birds with beautiful songs
such as the huia, kokako, saddleback and piopio. Falcon ruled the sky, kokako sped along the
branches of the tall trees, while kaka screeched and the kakapo boomed in the night, along with
the chuckle of the laughing owl. The call of the kiwi could be heard for many miles through the
darkness of the night. Bats flew through the forests, while the moa, takahe and wren lived on the
ground with the kiwi." [3]

We mourn fashionably, in this conservationist time late in our national development, the
destruction of the bush, but we should understand the position of the early settlers, for
whom clearing the land was essential for survival.

The Norsewood families were recruited in Norway, and their hopes were high as the men
travelled by drays from Napier: "... exquisite... the starry clematis, more beautiful than the
weeping rimu, more delicate than the ponga or the majestic mamaku. But... the hopes of
the immigrants (were) on the satisfaction of the longing for land to till.

For many of the men disillusionment and despair replaced the highest hopes when they saw
the land which they were to settle. Fertile, perhaps; who knew? But lost beneath a dense
entanglement of shrubs and vines growing beneath the giant trees of the forest...

To the women the shock was even more severe. Some wept when they saw the forest, others
became hysterical. As they lay, sheltered only by fallen trees, or by the foliage of shrubs...
some of them must have glimpsed the solitude ahead of them, their relation to the forest,
inescapable always, in whose shadows the lives of most of them were to be spent, until at
last it killed them, crushed beneath the boughs of its trees, or denied access to medical aid
when they lay ill, or until, in its last diabolical act of self destruction, its flames consumed
the patient savings of years." [4] (The last reference is to the terrible fires of 1885 that
destroyed many Norsewood buildings, property - and records).

Around Norsewood Today

Colenso wrote the earliest surviving record of "Norsewood" in his role as school inspector in
1874, the year a coach service between Napier and Palmerston North began (the railway reached
Kopua in 1877): "There is... a small school at a new place, or Scandinavian settlement inland,
called Dannevriik, for which a teacher is required... The place is very secluded in the woods.

There is another small settlement of Scandinavians at Norsewood, a few miles off..." Colenso
admonished the teacher for closing the school and giving a holiday every time there was a
funeral in the district. (The teacher also closed the school for baptisms and bushfires, for
the reason that he had to officiate at baptisms and funerals as well as teach English to the
Scandinavian children). [4].

Colenso was "with mixed feelings to watch the newcomers' hopes and necessity push back
the stump-charred forest margin towards the Ruahine foothills, reducing to thin clumps
of cattle-trodden gullied copses the landscape that was Te Tapere Nui a Whatonga." [5]

The forest burned: "... the sun could only ogle through a pall of smoke that veiled the burning
dissipation of a costless heritage. The narrow road... would be a choking pit of smoke flanked
by burning forest. Then the equinoctial gales would sweep through the gaunt, exposed, still
erect victims of the blaze, making all bush travel unsafe from their threat and the road
impassable until gangs had cleared it." [5 p431] The fires spelt the end of the huia, of course.

The Norsewood Lutheran church built in 1882
by "Carpenter" Olsen, destroyed in the 1888 fire.

Colenso stayed with friends at a house called "Fernhill" (it was the first house on the right going
north past the junction of Garfield Rd and SH2, a kilometre south of Norsewood; it was destroyed
in the fires and the present house, called "Fernhills", was built in 1907.

A plaque recalls its early settlers). Michael Stone, Dannevirke teacher and historian, has a 2002
recording of 99 year old Bela Andersen who recalled her father and sister talking about dinners
when Colenso was a guest.

Colenso wrote lovingly of the Bush, "I am leaving today for 40 Mile Bush - to spend a few days
in the sublime forests" [6]; "I purpose leaving for the Bush (my Highland Home)" [7].
"I have been thinking of paying a visit to Fernhill for a few days" [8].

He described many new plants from the Norsewood area, among them the orchids Caladenia
variegata, Corysanthes hypogaea, Dendrobium lessonii, Earina alba, E. quadrilobata, Gastrodia
leucopetala, Microtis longifolia, Pterostylis patens, Sarcochilus breviscapa, Thelymitra nemoralis
and T. purpureofusca.

It was this outpouring of new descriptions from Hawkes Bay that exasperated Cheeseman, who
wrote, "I am sorry that I find it impossible to accept as distinct species most of the plants you
have described...", to which Colenso famously replied, "Of one thing I am pretty certain, that if
you knew these plants I have laboured to describe, you would, I think, alter your judgement
concerning, at least, some of them... Continue to make what remarks you please on my work
- it shan't break squares between us: only, don't use a rusty lancet." [9].

Nicely put: don't descend to argumentum ad hominem; debate my arguments all you like,
but don't attack me personally. Too many would be scientists forget that.

Fernhills, on the site where Colenso stayed on visits to Norsewood.		The plaque at Fernhills; Bela (Elizabeth) Andersen recalled her father and sister reminiscing about dinner with Colenso.

What Is At The Skirts Of The Woods Now?

An 1889 map in the Alexander Turnbull Library shows Gundry road and Ngamoko road leading
towards the Ruahine foothills, Gundry from a little west of Fernhill, and Ngamoko from Norsewood
township to the Siberia sawmill.

Colenso would have walked one of these to the forest edge ("I arrived there {the Bush} on the
21st at noon, went into the woods {2 miles off} that afternoon") [10].

We drove to Gundry road late February, and searched for Microtis, but found not one.

Then quite coincidentally Mike Lusk emailed with a photograph of a Microtis he had found on
Kuripapango Hill on the other side of the Ruahine's. He wrote (2 March 08), "I took the attached
pic's (below) of a Microtis at the southern end of the Kaweka range last weekend. I wondered if
it might be a very late flowering M. arenaria mainly because of the notch in the labellum and
because it is listed as occurring in Hawke's Bay..." Well, and isn't that a very long leaf.

The next week Mike sent specimens to Brian Molloy, who identified the plant as typical M. unifolia.

Mike Lusk's Microtis unifolia

Conclusion

Microtis longifolia Col. looks like M. unifolia, but it flowers 5-6 months later. In my experience
M. unifolia starts to flower in September and is well over by December. M. longifolia Col. flowers
in February and March.

This behaviour is well known in the British Orchis ustulata, which flowers in the third week of May,
and then at different sites in late July and August, well after flowers at the first sites have shrivelled
and died. David Lang thinks the orchid is separating into two species, though continental European
observers believe they can see sufficient structural differences to split them into two species now. [11]

Are Microtis unifolia and M. longifolia different species with similar structure, flowering at different times? Perhaps so. Or perhaps they really are both M. unifolia.

Somehow I suspect we have not heard the last of M. longifolia Colenso.

References
 1. Colenso W. Trans N.Z.Inst 1885; 17: 247.
 2. Cheeseman TF. Manual of the New Zealand Flora. 1st edition. Wellington, Government Printer, 1906.
 3. http://www.mtbruce.org.nz/70_milebush_more.htm
 4. Culliford AF. Norsewood School 75th Jubilee 1874-1949. Dannevirke Publishing Co, 1949.
 5. Bagnall AG, Petersen GC. William Colenso. Reed, Wellington, 1948.
 6. Colenso W., letter to DP Balfour 19Feb79. Letters in the Alexander Turnbull Library collection, Wellington.
 7. Colenso W., letter to DP Balfour 6Jan85. Letters in the Alexander Turnbull Library collection, Wellington.
 8. Colenso W., letter to DP Balfour 1Mar87. Letters in the Alexander Turnbull Library collection, Wellington.
 9. Colenso to Cheeseman 17Oct 84: quoted in [5] above, p.426
10. Colenso W., letter to DP Balfour 25Nov81. Letters in the Alexander Turnbull Library collection, Wellington.
11. Lang D. Wild orchids of Sussex. Pomegranate Press, Lewes, 2001 .