The Fuchsia Walk is a short walk five minutes from the waterfront. It's easier than navigating the steep and narrow road over to Golden Bay and often it's alive with birdsong. The native tree fuchsia,
Fuchsia excorticata, kotukutuku, gives the walk its name and are some of the biggest I've seen. The fuchsia are deciduous here so quite sculptural with their orange-tinted trunks and branches
Winter is a quieter time in our temperate rainforest - I couldn't see any fungi by the path and the birds must have had a meeting somewhere else so I concentrated on the ferns that had spores ripening. So many different spore patterns - here are just a few.
Something else that caught my eye was
hanging clubmoss, Phlegmariurus varius - not only because of its unusual growth format (the photo is of a single plant) but its name has been reviewed three times; Hugh Wilson's 'Stewart Island Plants Field Guide' has it as
Lycopodium varia, then updated to
Huperzia varia and then changed again to
Phlegmariurus varius in 2013. It's hard for a newbie like me to follow but
NatureWatch is great for keeping me up to date.
Fern Gully is another lovely bush walk a bit further out of town but well worth the extra walking. It follows Mill Creek so it will be muddy and there are charming footbridges to cross. The end of the track (about 20 mins) opens out into a large clearing which has a well-placed wooden seat to enjoy the birdlife.
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| The clearing at the end of the track |
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| Mill Creek |
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| Fern Gully Track |
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| Footbridge over Mill Creek |
