TRIP REPORT : Kaitoke

 Saturday :   1 November 2005

Libertia grandiflora.   Photo: Jeremy Rolfe.

Fifteen people turned up for the trip around the tracks at Kaitoke, including a visitor, Glyn Sherrat recently qualified from Kew Gardens.   The weather was quite pleasant as we traversed the Loop Track and then started on the Swingbridge Track noting what looked to be an emerging gastrodia precariously placed on the edge of the track.   Two late-comers joined the main party some way up the track by which time several species had already been added to the list.

Unfortunately the weather deteriorated just before we came out of the main bush and started down towards the bridge.   Just a persistent drizzle but rather wetting all the same.   The solitary Rhabdothamnus solandri plant was noted and a brief search was made for other specimens in the vicinity without success.

Just over the bridge on the rock face a wahlenbergia was in flower with what looked at a distance to be white flowers but on closer inspection was seen to be a very pale violet.   It seemed to key to W. ramosa but I am expertly assured that it is probably a hybrid between W. rupestris and W. violacea which is sometimes found swarming on disturbed ground.   The flower colours up markedly on drying.

There are a couple of river accesses off the road running down from the filtration plant which enable a short ramble along the river bank where a lot of Libertia grandiflora was in flower.   The patch of the small spider orchid, Nematoceras rivularis agg. “whiskers”, was surveyed but was long past flowering.   Another patch of what may be the same orchid was later found further up river and will have to be checked next season.

Lunch was taken under cover on the Terrace Track before the hardy remainder set off along the River Track and on towards the camping ground.   A big discussion point was a beech tree that looked to be “different” to the extent that it was thought it might be a hybrid between red and hard beech.   The Tony Druce list for the Pakuratahi Forks notes such a hybrid but short of sending a specimen for analysis we will never be sure.   A return down the main access road to the carpark completed what was a fairly typical BotSoc trip, 6 hours to cover about 2 hours of tracks!

Peter Beveridge managed to add 26 species to the known list for the Kaitoke area.

Participants: Peter Beveridge, Gavin Dench, Pat Enright, Jill Goodwin, Chris Hopkins, Chris Horne, Rodney Lewington, Felicity Maxwell, Barbara Mitcalfe, Mick Parsons, Bruce Sampson, Viv Sampson, Darea Sherratt, Glyn Sherratt, Sunita Singh.

Pat Enright