TRIP REPORT : Queen Elizabeth Park

 Saturday :   5 August 2006

We visited the plant nursery to see the range of locally sourced native species being raised for planting in the dune and wetland areas in the park.

Across Whareroa Road, the revegetation of the wetland margins and surrounding dunes, done in 1997, is impressive, with manuka and kanuka over 3 m high.

To help our botanising of the kahikatea remnant, Pat Enright provided a plant list, based on Colin Ogle’s 1981 and 1987 list, with additions made in 2000.   Lara added round-leaved fern / Pellaea rotundifolia, and we noted several species planted to help with the restoration of this important remnant, e.g. whau / Entelea arborescens, largeleaved milk tree / Streblus banksii, wharangi / Melicope ternata, kotukutuku / Fuchsia excorticata, and toetoe / Cortaderia toetoe.

The small wetland on the north side of the remnant which was planted in 2001 has been transformed by harakeke / Phormium tenax, cabbage trees / Cordyline australis etc.

We crossed pasture on rolling dunelands to the Inland Track on the coastal dunes, then climbed through mahoe forest with numerous, large, shining spleenwort / Asplenium oblongifolium, to regain the track beyond a band of blackberry, one of the widespread pest species being controlled by Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC).   Soon, Leon and Lara rediscovered the one plant of Hooker’s spleenwort / Asplenium hookerianum, they saw on a previous trip.   It was an addition to the dunes list prepared by Barbara Mitcalfe and Chris Horne in 2001.   Near the carpark south of Whareroa Beach, we saw sand coprosma / Coprosma acerosa, growing through dense veld grass / Ehrharta erecta.   On the foredune, near the storm beach, we saw spinifex, pingao and speckled sedge / Carex testacea, then on the stream terrace, sand sedge / Carex pumila, and another sedge, Bolboschoenus caldwellii.

To return to the cars, we travelled in 1939-vintage Wellington Fiducia tram no. 239.

We thank GWRC Parks & Forests staff for supplies of the park brochure, and the leaflets: Wetland Plants and Landscape and Wetlands, and GWRC Ranger Nikki LaMonica for permission to visit the nursery.

Participants : Margaret Aitken, Karin Andersen, Brian Chittenden, Barbara Clark, Rosemary Collier, Rae Collins, Gavin Dench, Bryan Halliday, Chris Hopkins, Chris Horne (co-leader / scribe), Rosalind Iles, Jean Luke, Barbara Mitcalfe (co-leader), Leon Perrie, Lara Shepherd, Sunita Singh.