Moving Blog to New Location

Please go to the current grasstalk blog at:
grasstalk.wordpress.com
see you there!
Mary Meyer,  March 31, 2011

In the Twin Cities, the winter of 2010-11 had 80.2 inches of snow by March 15, 7th snowiest on record and well above the 52.5 inch average. Grasses at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum's collection were buried, especially from a November heavy and wet snow. Only the giant miscanthus remains standing in this photo taken in mid-March.

Dwarf toetoe, Chionochloa flavicans, is a showy ornamental, often found in landscape plantings. Its numerous flowers are often nodding. Above at the Auckland Botanic Gardens and below in a planting at the Wellington Botanic Gardens. Note that birds, (sparrows, I think) are feeding on the grass seedheads in the photo below. Also propagated from seed and only hardy to zone 8 for us in the US.   

Chionochloa conspicua, toetoe hunangamhoho is a common native along roadsides and in higher elevations in New Zealand. It grows to 7 feet and has showy flowers, similar to Cortaderia or pampas grass.

Red tussock grasslands in New Zealand of Chionochloa rubra, above and below. 

This clump forming grass is widely distributed, especially in the south island of New Zealand. It is often grown in landscapes for its thick clumping form. The flowers are borne in the foliage and not especially showy. Hardy to only zone 8, it is usually propagated from seed.

Water fountain in Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney.

The Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney are almost 200 years old (2016), with many historic plants and herbarium specimens. They are adjacent to the famous opera house and the beautiful harbor area. 

Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens are beautiful, huge landscaped park with thousands of plants.

The red center of Australia, the outback is beautiful, very green now due to unseasonable rains. Uluru (Ayer's Rock) is amazing. Quite hot, 100F and the flies were numerous.

Flying into Sydney from New Zealand we saw the harbor, the famous bridge and opera house are in the center of the photo. We changed planes at Sydney and flew on to Cairns, Australia.

Cairns, Australia is in the tropics and it is the rainy season now. Yesterday I saw more rainfall in one day than I thought was possible. And of course, we went to the Botanic Garden. Giant spiders, huge flying bats and gorgeous tropical plants, very colorful.

Grasses in New Zealand. They are beautiful and cover the hills. The most common grass is probably red tussock, Chionochloa rubra, shown in the background of this photo. It forms a dense clump and the flowers are often borne in the fine foliage.

Some areas are preserved as scenic preserves of tussock grasslands.  This photo is from the farm we visited, this is an area in the hills they use for pastures.

Yesterday, Feb 22, 2011 there was another major earthquake in Christchurch, where we were last week. This building was across the street from our hotel, and we saw on the news that it was greatly damaged yesterday.

Christchurch had so many beautiful buildings that are of historic significance. What a tragedy.

Food in New Zealand has been great. Tremendous selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, most locally grown. Remember it is summer here and crops are coming out of the field now. Here is the largest celery I have ever seen. It is hard to get the scale right, but let's say it was double the size we normally see. I do not remember the price of the celery, but most of the grocery items are similar, except milk is higher.

Beef, lamb and venison are very popular. Venison is the farm raised we see quite often in the fields and was at the farm where we stayed. In Queenstown, they are serious about hamburgers, especially at Fergburgers, this was delicious.  It was the largest hamburger I have eaten, Jim only ate 1/4 of it. A plain one cost $10, I opted for cheddar cheese, which was $11.

New Zealand flax is a common plant along roadsides and actually everywhere. Phormium tenax, or harakeke, was extremely important to the native people, Maori. They used it to make clothing, baskets, rope, and anything that needed a strong fiber. Captain Cook saw the uses for this plant and called it 'New Zealand flax'. The flax most of our clothing comes from is a different plant (Linium) which is the fabric linen we are more familiar with. This photo is from the Phormium collection at Wellington Botanic Garden.

As an ornamental, New Zealand flax is a nice garden plant. Its coarse, upright texture adds interest in the garden and the flowers are attractive in the spring. The dark seedpods are also interesting. There are many cultivars of NZ flax: yellow, purple, striped, etc. Most of these come from another species, Phormium cookianum.  This photo is from a private garden on the walking track on the Kelvin Peninsula near Queenstown. Unfortunately, NZ flax is not hardy in Minnesota and is only seen in mild climates, similar to England or California.

The mountains in Queenstown, New Zealand. This view is from near our hotel. In the foreground is a rugby field. New Zealand has a television station devoted totally to rugby. Each town, regardless of the size seems to have a rugby field. 

Doubtful Sound is a popular site in western New Zealand. It is only accessed via public transportation, which includes a boat and bus ride. Then, you are on a boat in the sound. It is hard to see the scale of Doubtful Sound. This cruise ship (we saw 2 the day we were there) gives you some idea of how large it is.

We saw seals, dolphins and two penguins; the dolphins were jumping; amazing to see.

Doubtful Sound is a beautiful place to visit.

Dunedin Botanic Garden is the oldest botanic garden in New Zealand. It overlooks the city and is quite hilly. Their Mediterranean Garden is beautiful, full of sun loving plants that are mulched with gray gravel. The view to the city was very nice. This is the 5th large botanic garden we visited, considering New Zealand has only 5 million people (very similar to Minnesota) this is a larger number of very beautiful and significant gardens for such a small number of people. However, the gardens are widely distributed, and the climate of the gardens is diverse.

We had a wonderful farm visit in southern New Zealand, it was 2,000 hectares (about 5,000 acres) with 6,000 sheep, a couple hundred cattle and 2,000 red deer, a species from Europe were on the farm we stayed on.

These are 7 month old 'lambs', in great shape since the weather is so favorable and they are moved quite often to new pastures.

The deer are larger than our whitetails and are mated with elk, so the offspring are even larger. This picture is taken from the truck, as we did not get out. Jim was the gate keeper and when we left the gate open in this field, it was a rush to get back and close it before the 'mob' (as the farmer refers to the herd or flock) moves to exit via the gate. They like being moved, it means new grazing and are used to moving every few days. This farm was over 3,500 acres, with many paddocks, all fenced with numerous gates. In our 4 hr tour, Jim open and closed about 20 gates.

Fodder beets are grown for livestock feed. This is Beta vulgaris same as sugar beets, same as our garden beet, same as swiss chard, however, these are all specific cultivars of the same species. The amazing thing is, farmers in NZ plant these from seed, and just let the stock in to eat the beets from the field. No harvesting necessary!! The beets are huge, similar to sugar beets in size and orange instead of white like sugar beets. Sheep, and cattle and I think deer all are grazed in these fields. They also feed hay and limit the extent of the fodder beet field that the stock can access.

Stunning views from the volcanic rim south of Christchurch, known as the Port Hills area. Many locals walk this area, the tourists take a gondola up the hills. We drove and walked. Beautiful scenery! Lyttelton Harbour is in the center of the volcanic remains, shown above.

Pegasus Bay overlooking Sumner, a small village southeast of Christchurch. Pegasus Bay leads to the Pacific Ocean.

New Zealand gardens have a lot of roses and they are in full bloom now. The Christchurch Botanic Garden had hundreds, labeled and easy to find on this interpretive sign.

These are the tallest hybrid tea roses I have ever seen, 7' next to Jim!

Broadfields Landscape Garden is just outside of Christchurch. It has a long border of New Zealand native plants, ending in a pool with water lilies. It is a young garden, 17 years old, so you can see how quickly the trees have grown, since everything was planted, it was a field before the garden was made.

Christchurch Botanical Garden is surrounded by the city and the people love it. With 1.5 million visitors a year; there is a special play area (including a large 2' deep swimming pool) for kids and it was very popular, since it was sunny and warm, about 80F when we were there. There is no admission and people view it as a lovely public park.

Christchurch Botanical Garden has many old and huge trees. Their mild climate is great for growing plants. 

Christchurch is know as the 'City of Gardens', currently they are having their Festival of Flowers celebration. The Floral Carpet is a tradition that has been placed in the main aisle of the Christchurch Cathedral and it lasts for 10 days. Great detail and a very timely theme on the value of water.  

On Thursday we drove to Kaikoura, a seaside town on the eastern side of the south island. The ocean is beautiful here. We went sea kayaking and saw penguins, thousands of Hutton's shearwaters (medium sized bird), fur seals, oyster catchers and many gulls and terns. Kaikoura has about 3,000 seals and we saw many of them quite close. As long as we were in the water, the guide said we were not a threat to them, and they ignored us. We got close to a penquin, it was quite small, but fun to watch.

We hiked south of Blenheim at a Farm Park, cattle and sheep graze here, but we saw mostly people, many jogging up and down the hillsides in the tracks, or paths provided. The views from the top were wonderful, vineyards on the west and sea on the east. The white blocks are the covers on the vines for pest protection.

Close up of the pest control on red grapes; not many red grapes are grown here. You can see the fruit at the lower part of the plants here.

Jim had a cuppachino at Highfield Wines.

We ate lunch at Wairau Rive Wines. I had prawn pizza and Jim had mussel soup. Delicious. I had sauvignon blanc (the major wine produced here) and Jim had a chardonnay. Delicious food, our table overlooked the vineyard. Our lunch cost $60.