Fenceline floras

In the midst of widespread landscape modification, nature’s impulse is frequently pushed, pulled and squeezed into some of the most unlikely places. Amongst the novel habitats generated by human activities, fenceline floras frequently grab our attention as peculiar linear remnants that exhibit resilience and abstraction.

Several years ago, I was able to spend some time plant-hunting with my friend, Graeme Atkins, on the occasion of his visit to Wellington to receive the Loder Cup. One of the places that we sought out was a compressed remnant of Wairarapa’s lowland gravel flora, in which an interesting form of the Melicytus alpinus complex engulfs the fenceline together with Coprosma rigida (shown in fruit below) and an unusual Clematis (below left) that seemed closest to a form of C. forsteri.

Straddled between the editing influences of agricultural machinery (& livestock) and road maintenance, this compressed plant community contains members of a nearby grazed kanuka woodland (shown below, looking for all the world like a still from a Miyazaki Hayao film), and presumably of other remnants that we didn’t see from our roadside vantage points.

The occurrence of Melicytus aff. alpinus in Wairarapa lowlands is significant, as this species complex is scarce in the North Island. Furthermore, gravel floras such as this are enigmatic, frequently-assailed ecosystems with distinctive forms and species – including the critically-endangered Canterbury Plains endemic, Olearia adenocarpa.

In conservation terms, remnants like this linear shrubland assist with imagining the kinds of life that once inhabited these seasonally dry riverine plains – and which may once again be helped to take their place within the landscapes that have driven their evolution.