19 October 2007

Panto Track

page 3

Taking photos into the sun nearly always generates contrasty and gloomy looking tracks, even with the contrast turned down.

There's a host of littlies under our feet. Here's some Blechnum procerum, and the omnipresent hangehange. I'm not sure what the small round leaved seedling is. Maybe a rata.

Speaking of which, here's one on its way up a pine trunk. Talk about miscegenation...

Dench and Parore speak about slippery boardwalk, and here it is. Not much of it but definitely requiring caution. I hate boardwalk only slightly less than I hate the bog it often takes us across.

(Everytime I walk the Upper Kauri Track in the Cascade Kauri, there seems to be more of it. The path is so popular now that the plastic webbing on the surface is becoming smooth and offering a very false sense of "non-slip". There's no purchase for one's poles either, and they tend to keep getting caught in the cracks.

Still, with the use that track gets, the kauri roots do need more protection. I get a sense that we are still learning about what works and what doesn't do so well in managing this wonderful Waitakere walking resource on our doorsteps, and the ARC is on the whole doing much better than many local bodies in this respect.)

When we're not doing ridges or sidling along valleys, the bush opens out around the track into a very pleasant environment, not as fiercely in your face as it often is, and with lots of room to move.

Here's another very geometrical fern, which I have tentatively identified as Polystichum richardii, the pikopiko, or shield fern.

Miranda finds a beautiful specimen of a mahoe leaf skeleton. There's something about the way it catches the light when you hold it up.

On through the tunnel.

And here's one of the biggest miniature tree ferns (Blechnum fraseri) that I have seen. If that's not a contradiction in terms. Miranda holds a pole alongside for comparison.

A nice set of pine trees. In Woodhill, they dominate, and only a few hardy species survive beneath the canopy. Here, there is enough room among them for a wide variety of plants, shrubs and trees.

Here's a young totara, with a mingimingi beneath it, just to confuse you.

Down on the carpet is a bush lawyer. This one with round leaves is Rubus australis.

One of the secrets of the manuka's survival is that from about 150mm in height it is capable of flowering and setting seeds, on its way to being 8m high or thereabouts.

By now the canopy has been more or less taken over by medium-sized rewarewa. It's easier to watch the leaf litter than walk along gazing upwards.

Here are the gold spathulate leaves of Coprosma arboreum.

and a small group of rewarewa seedlings being harangued by a slightly taller mapau.

The track gets a little rougher we are told, and sure enough, here we are, but on the whole the track lacks the active malevolence of the Huia Ridge track