Journal Number 95
May 2005
HISTORICAL REPRINT
Jottings From The Past
The Otago Witness (fore-runner to today's Otago Daily Times) reported the following 100 years ago: "'When pig-hunting in the Upper Waihora, we got on to a large boar that had given us a few hard runs on previous occasions,'
Mr. W. O. Leith writes from Martinborough, Wairarapa. 'He went off on his usual route, with the
dogs hard on his trail. His track took him around a long point. I set out for three-quarters of
a mile over a fairly steep ridge, in order to get a passing shot at him. I found it very hard to get up the beech face, but reached the top, and I had started to go down through the undergrowth at a good pace when I ran into a bank of perfume. It was the sweetest and strongest perfume I ever smelt. I pulled up, and on climbing back a few yards, saw some flowers growing close to the ground.
They were small, whitish, waxy flowers, clustered on hard, wiry stems. I thought at the time
that they were the prettiest bush flowers I had seen. When I walked up to them the perfume
seemed to change to a pungent smell, like the smell of large yellow garden bulbs. I took
some of the flowers, crammed them into my hat, shoved my hat half through my belt, and
continued the hunt until the dogs gave out.
When I returned to my three mates, we sat down to have a smoke. I hardly had rolled a
cigarette when one of them, about six feet away, sat up and asked where the sweet smell
came from. I showed the flowers, which were strange to all my mates'."
The Waihora runs down from Haurangi State Forest Park, site of the Group's late November field trip - Ed.
William Townson wrote in 1906, "I had the good fortune to discover in the same situation (Mount Rochfort) a little orchis which forms a new genus, and which Mr Cheeseman has honoured me by naming Townsonia."
The Dunedin teacher G.M. Thomson wrote (of Adenochilus gracilis) in the Journal of Science
in 1882: "I found the plant this last January, when botanising in the neighbourhood of Lake Hauroto (Howloko), in the south-eastern corner of the South Island…. Mr. Petrie informs me that he believes it occurs in the forest at the head of Lake Wakatipu, but he has only seen the leaf".
Petrie was right - I have seen it there - Ed.
Miss Helen Dalrymple, science teacher at Otago Girls High School, rallied the schoolgirls on an outing to a part of Signal Hill in Dunedin (1937): "But the rarest little orchid on Stony Hill has so far evaded us. It is a very slender pink-flowered plant called Caladenia minor, and the girl who first finds it is to have threepence as a reward!"
My guess? Caladenia variegata - Ed.
G.M. Thomson, science teacher at the high schools in Dunedin wrote (of Chiloglottis cornuta) in 1878, "The arrangement of the parts is so simple that an insect alighting on the labellum and advancing its head into the base could hardly fail to remove the pollinia; nor could one entering with pollen on its head fail to leave them on the stigma…. I am inclined to think self-fertilization takes place in flowers which have not been visited by insects…. I examined one sunny day twenty-two flowers growing in the open; of these only three had both pollinia removed…".
"Come with us in imagination," Helen Dalrymple (1937) invited us, "on an excursion up Stony Hill on a shiny summer morning…. It is not long before we find our first spider orchids at the foot of some low manuka scrub… lovely dark ruby red flowers, one flower to a leaf, with rounded hoods, and long spider-like feelers…. Shrieks of delight from other groups are heard as they discover fresh patches…".
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