Just do it

I found three poroporo growing underneath the trampoline today! Seeded there by a bird no doubt. The light is good under there actually, and the cool conditions make an excellent plant nursery. Perhaps I should move the seed tray with 40 poroporo seeds underneath there with full expectation of good things (except the birds might dig it over).

I received my Wellington Botanical Society newsletter by email yesterday. This quarters' bulletin remembers Tony Druce and Eric Godley, each very well known botanists, who both passed away in the last few months. I feel connected to Eric's work through my study on kowhai in the 1990s. My thesis looked at the rbcL-atpB sequence from all New Zealand populations and offshore populations of Sophora microphylla, S. prostrata, S. tetraptera, and S. howinsula - collections that Eric put together at DSIR in Lincoln, now Landcare Manaaki Whenua.

I must write an article for the next newsletter, emploring local botanists to help me locate large poroporo fruit (or good specimens to collect from). I am not sure whether this will be of interest to a group who are largely concerned with the serious business of ensuring lesser-known plants don''t disappear into extinction. My experiment seems a little trivial in comparison, maybe even reckless. Who knows, maybe the birds won't be able to get their beaks around my poroporo of the future! (Yeah right!).