Backroader: Take a closer look

One of my favourite pastimes is to sit in the bush and look closely at what's around me. Temperate rainforest is full of diversity and brimming with interesting things. Understanding the dynamics of native bush growth (succession) opened my eyes to the harm that introduced plants and animals do and it convinced me to be a lot more mindful over what I planted and what I brought into an area.

The native Rubus species, more commonly known as bush lawyer, is related to the introduced blackberry and raspberry. Although their fruiting season is listed as January to March, I've been finding these berries on the bush floor that I can't identify as anything other than bush lawyer...

I'll have to investigate further and figure out whether it's Rubus cissoides (fruit like small orange to reddish blackberries), Rubus australis (fruit like small, shiny pale orange blackberries) or Rubus schmidelioides (fruit like small yellowish or orange blackberries). What do you reckon?

There are a couple of other plants that like to get their hooks into you; Uncinia, the native hookgrass, is well known to hikers who spend evenings cleaning them off socks and hairy legs! Rakiura has over half of the 32 known New Zealand species of sedge and identification requires the same level of patience that cryptic crosswords demand. If you're interested then http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/ and search for Uncinia; http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2009/10/30/about-hooks-hairy-legs-and-sedges/ and http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/search.aspx?term="Uncinia uncinata" are some good places to start.

Perhaps Uncinia uncinata - you have to admire the way this
plant spreads its seeds around

Piripiri or Bidibids belong to the Acaena family and only 2 species are common on Rakiura. The seedheads are cute little spheres which cling on to clothing and hair. They look simple to pick off but when you touch them they 'explode' into separate seedheads and stick like crazy!