As Melbourne in Australia goes into another 7-day lockdown, I’ve been thinking about my lovely holiday in Victoria last year – a couple of weeks before our part of the world went mad – and have been wondering when it might be ‘safe’ to return to tripping across the Tasman Sea to visit loved ones. So I thought it would be nice to share some images from that driving holiday and remember a happy family time.
Ozothamnus turbinatus, or coast everlasting, is found from South Australia to New South Wales and including Tasmania. The leaves are aromatic when crushed. Photo: Sandra Simpson
Billardiera longiflora, or purple apple-berry, is a small evergreen vine found in cool, moist forests from southern New South Wales to Tasmania. The berry is edible, although some say the flesh is best for jams and chutneys. Photo: Sandra Simpson
A ghost forest on the Cape Otway road. A few years ago the koala population in the area was slowly starving to death, after the animals literally ate themselves out of a home – the dead trees are Eucalyptus viminalis (manna gums), native to southeast Australia including Tasmania, killed by hungry koalas. Read more here. Photo: Sandra Simpson
To finish, let’s celebrate these living eucalyptus trees in the Otway National Park, a lush rainforest. Photo: Sandra Simpson
In 1934 25-year-old New Zealander John Ewart went to Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in England to train and 3 years later was posted with the Colonial Agricultural Service to Singapore, a place that became the focus of his working life for many years – and where he became involved with orchids.
It’s a bit of a story, especially with the outbreak of World War 2, so get comfy.
John started as the renowned Singapore Botanic Gardens as assistant curator but after only 12 months was assigned to the Straits Settlement Botanic Gardens in Penang (Malaysia) for a year, before returning to Singapore. Fortunately, he was on leave in New Zealand when Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942, and was posted to Ghana with the task of increasing cocoa production there. Two years later he joined the British Army and served in India before returning to Malaya at the end of the war.
Aranda Peter Ewart is a cross of Arachnis hookeriana and Vanda Kapoho (Vanda tricolor x Vanda lamellata). Photo: Jennifer Ewart
The Gardens had been pitted with shell craters and trenches during the fall of Singapore but fighting had spared the priceless Herbarium (where specimens are stored for scientific research). Despite the well-documented terrible conditions in Singapore during the Japanese occupation, the invading force did look after the Gardens, mostly thanks to the quick-thinking Professor Hidezo Tanakadate of Tohoku University, a volcanologist, who immediately assumed control of the Gardens and evicted the military. Prof. Tanakadate, one of whose fellow officers was related to the Emperor, retained the British directors to administer and assist in repairs. Other staff members were not as fortunate, sent to work on the Siam-Burma Railway, where many lost their lives.
After nearly a month’s reparation work on houses and grounds after the invasion, “the Gardens regained its calm centre of research activity”.
Botany professor Kwan Koriba, from the Imperial University of Kyoto, took over as director in December 1942, immersing himself in research on the growth habits of selected Malayan trees and producing a scientific paper on the topic. Eric Holttum and E J H Corner, previously in charge of the Gardens and who remained at liberty throughout the war, also devoted their time to research.
Mr Corner had chosen to stay in Singapore (although his wife and son had escaped) seeing it as his duty to protect the Gardens’ scientific collections. Just five days after the fall of Singapore, he was appointed secretary and interpreter to Prof Tanakadate. Read more about this period of Mr Corner’s life here (he has sometimes been accused of collaboration).
After demob, John Ewart was one of the first to return to Singapore Botanic Gardens and was in charge of the gardens until the director, Murray Henderson, returned in 1946. John then assumed responsibility for the day-to-day running of the gardens, including making collections for the Herbarium and advising the City Parks Department. In 1946 he was also appointed Agricultural Officer for Singapore (increasing crop production to feed the colony) and carried out those duties alongside his work at the gardens. For a short period in 1954 he was acting Director of the gardens. Under moves to nationalisation he was compulsorily retired in 1957.
When he and his wife Mary and their family came to Tauranga, John grew carnations and chrysanthemums for the cut flower market for a time, as well as avocados. He was also a well-respected member of the International Dendrology Society. John, who returned to Singapore in 1986 for the 50th anniversary of the Singapore Gardening Society, died in Tauranga in 2001 and Mary in 2010.
Peter Ewart in the Singapore Botanic Gardens with the orchid named for him. Photo: Jennifer Ewart
John’s son Peter, who lives at Omokoroa, has been trying to find out if Aranda Peter Ewart, named for him by his father and registered by Singapore Botanic Gardens in 1951, is available in New Zealand, or if he is able to conform to MPI rules to be able to import it.
The Malayan Orchid Hybrids book by M R Henderson and G H Addison (1956) records that the cross was made in 1944, so during the Japanese occupation. The plant was described as free flowering with up to four flower spikes at a time, ‘but not very robust vegetatively’.
“It seems my father was responsible for the plant from after the war,” Peter says. “He was also responsible for a couple of other orchid hybrids at least, which he named after his other children, Gillian and Andrew, but those flowers did not enjoy commercial success.”
If Peter is able to import the plant, he intends to present one to Auckland City Council for their Wintergarden heated house under the custodianship of Nick Lloyd. “They already have two of its species parents in their collection.”
South American pampas grasses (Cortaderia) are often mistaken for native toetoe and vice-versa. But what is ‘toetoe’? According to Lawrie Metcalfe in his 2008 book, The Cultivation of New Zealand Native Grasses, there are five distinct species called ‘toetoe’ (in fact, in this book they are all listed as Cortaderia but were reclassified as Austroderia in 2011).
The North Island species are Austroderia fulvida (also in the Golden Bay area of the South Island), Austroderia splendens (Northland only), Austroderia toetoe (from about Tauranga to Wellington). In the South Island there is Austroderia richardii (also Stewart Island), and on the Chatham Islands Austroderia turbaria.
Austroderia richardii growing at Milford Sound in the South Island. Photo: Sandra Simpson
The South Island toetoe (Austroderia richardii) is smaller than the most commonly seen North Island plants and doesn’t develop the large base of their cousins (and pampas). The plant will also grow almost anywhere in all soil types and is particularly effective in massed plantings. I saw a fenceline or three planted with this toetoe in the Domes area of Southland and they looked fantastic.
Toetoe growing in Tauranga, possibly Austroderia toetoe. Photo: Sandra Simpson
Maori used the plants in various ways, including for baskets and mats (leaves), to line the walls of their homes (stems), to make kite frames (stems) and to staunch bleeding (seed heads).
Toetoe is also known as ‘cutty grass’ as the serrated leaf edge can easily cut the skin so careful handling is required.
How do you tell the difference between the exotic weed pampas and native toetoe?
Pampas leaves snap readily when given a sharp tug. Toetoe leaves do not.
Native toetoe, which have arching or drooping golden-creamy flowers and are much less promiscuous in spreading seed, flower in spring and summer (September-January). Pampas flowers in late summer and autumn (January-June) on tall, stiffly erect flower stems, looking like a fluffy duster on a wooden rod. Flowers are white-pinkish or tinged with purple.
The surface of a toetoe leaf is dark, shiny green and smooth, it has a distinctive secondary vein between the midrib and margin of the leaf and when the leaves die they hang down flat. Pampas has leaves that are dull and rough to touch and only have a single midrib. One of the easiest ways to identify this weed from our native plant is when pampas leaves die they curl up like wood shavings at the base of the plant.
Pampas seed carries great distances in strong wind, and was one of the weeds found invading the Poor Knights islands, 3km off the New Zealand coast!
Sandra's Garden 