Blue Orchid 2000 Kdv Russian Flowers
Joao Charlesbois
Over two weeks in December 2000 I was lucky enough to travel to several of the New Zealand and Australian subantarctic islands. This trip was proposed, encouraged and facilitated by our grant partners the University of Queensland (and paid for through the Australian Research Council SPIRT grant we share with the UQ and the Australian National Botanical Gardens.
We left Dunedin on the 11th of December and headed into the Southern Ocean, we had what the tour crew called moderate to rough conditions for most of the trip. A significant number of people retired to their bunks only to appear on reaching an island, others attempted cameo appearances at meal times. Unbelievably, and contrary to all my expectations I reveled in the entire experience. For many reasons I had not expected to be at all comfortable wallowing around on the ocean 100s of ks away from plant life, as it was I spent many hours on the bridge enjoying the ocean and exhilarated by wave topping albatrosses.
Campbell Island
We arrived at Campbell island on December the 13th, entering Perseverance harbour very early in the morning. A strong chattering headwind funneling down the valley, a few rare yellow eyed penguins porpoising alongside, albatrosses doing their slow motion wheel whatever the wind or weather and ahead mist and cloud hiding and revealing the landscape at almost shutter like speed.
Once through the wild animal gauntlet (except for the occasional SAM) we climbed across the heathlands and through a couple of small depressions forested with 4-5m tall multi-trunked, moss covered Dracophyllums and from then up through grasslands to the edge of the spectacular cliffs overlooking North-West bay. Constant shifting and lifting mists revealed the scale of the bay below. The cliffs are the remnant rim of a large caldera with the jagged tooth shape of Ile La Dente (now called more pragmatically Dent Island) as an iconic focal point.
The impacts of humans and human introductions onto the island (sheep and some cattle, rats, and fire) means that in some cases the more sensitive flora has been reduced to refugial populations, the exposed cliff top edges seem to have provided this sort of niche for the extraordinary megaherbs. These can be almost tyre-sized rosettes of intricately corrugated leaves, creased with origami like precision in the case of Pleurophyllum speciosum or the large dissected leaves and enormous pink broccoli (although actually belonging to the Carrot family), like flower heads of Anisotome latifolia.
Next Morning
Perseverance harbour and environs was an ambient and suitably subantarctic grey and Mnt.Honey, the target of one of two planned walks was shrouded in cloud. The tour leaders opted for an extended version of a walk up to the Col Lyall ridge and beyond to again look over North West Bay, this time from a different more northerly aspect.
In contrast to the outsized Pleurophyllum a number of fingernail sized orchids flowered boldly but were barely visible along the edges of the path. Hands and knees were needed to view the minute, nearly transparent flowers of the antarctic beak orchid, Lyperanthus antarcticus.
A distinctive feature of New Zealands shrublands is the high percentage of divaricating plants. This physiological adaption is characterised by dense, obtusely angled branching and helps create the pruned/sculpted appearance of the shrubby heathlands on the island. The low heathlands on Campbell island are dominated by Myrsine divaricata and Coprosma species. Divarication is probably an adaption to environmental conditions, especially extreme winds and is possibly also attributable to grazing animals (some scientists blame the now extinct giant flightless bird, the Moa).
From this point we could see two sites of historical significance on the island, the collapsing remains of the coast watchers hut was barely visible at the base of a short rise. The hut had been manned constantly during the Second World War when both Perseverance harbour and Carnley Harbour on Auckland island were perceived as being possible points for hiding and massing large fleets. Paradoxically and more importantly the coast watchers became the islands first naturalists and were instrumental in gaining recognition for the islands as places of ecological significance.
The other historical site was a discernible line created by the regeneration of the grasslands and herbfields on the northern side of a now nonexistent fence used to restrict the remaining sheep to the southern section of the island. With the removal of sheep (and the fence) from the entire island in 1991 this grass formed ecological demarcation zone is now starting to blur. Patches of megaherbs and the larger palatable grasses, Chinochloa antarctica and Poa foliosa are rapidly beginning to recolonise. Here protected from the westerlies, the megaherbs, especially Pleurophyllum speciosum and P. criniferum were reaching their maximum dimensions.
In the distance an extensive field of the pale straw-coloured tussock grass Chinochloa antarctica monopolised a sheltered bowl which reached from under the lee of the north western cliffs and the southern slopes of Mount Azimuth, to the edge of north east harbour and included most of the interior of the northern section of the island. Looking east under the very blackest of storm clouds, a single blinding, biblical shaft of intense sunlight lit the entrance to north east harbour.
On reaching the cliff edge the scale of the north-west bay caldera was revealed once again, the cliff rim forming one quadrant of an otherwise imaginary crater circling in the mist around a now more distant Ile la Dente. Continuing along the cliff top we were treated to a breathtaking display of unison flying by a pair of Light Mantled Sooty Albatrosses. As the wind dropped and the weather cleared we sat watching two Cape Petrels hovering only 3 or 4 metres in front of us, trying to hold position, though continually buffeted by the powerful updraft.
In the higher more exposed locations the orange red foliage of the rush Marsippospermum gracile provided a different, subtle colouration in the landscape. Ahead at a slightly lower point on the cliff face, a tongue of green stretched inland for a hundred metres into the Chinochloa grassland. Blasts of salt-laden sea spume being propelled up the cliff face and carried inland gave reason to this dramatic change in communities, the grasses retreating in the face of this elemental onslaught and being replaced by stunted versions of the more robust elements of the flora. The dominant plants were dwarfed Bulbinella rossii with numerous small rosettes of Pleurophyllum hookerii and miniaturised versions of Pleurophyllum speciosum and Stibocarpa polaris. Mats of Phyllachne colensoii covered with tiny white flowers grew right up to the wind eroded edge.
We walked over this green intrusion and felt the sting of the salt winds as they curved up over the edge of the ridge before the final part of our walk on Campbell Is. took us to the foot of Mnt.Azimuth. Occasionally, almost submerged amongst the grass tussocks, we encountered the intense blue flowers of Hebe benthamii. Members of the party also noted the finely dissected, fennel like leaves of another large herb Anisotome antipoda.
I had just spotted a small, sparsely flowering patch of one of the islands six endemic plants, the small daisy Damnamenia vernicosa var. mollicula when a call came over the radio advising us that we were due back on the ship. This information led to a comparatively precipitous retreat down the valley punctuated by stops to take more photographs and a slight incident with a waiting SAM as we neared the base.
On leaving Perseverance harbour we practiced the strange ritual of chumming (throwing squid pieces into the sea behind the ship). The aim was to give the passengers a chance to see and photograph the seabirds on the wing. In reality it reduced these otherwise remote and purposeful birds to a squabbling confusion of scavengers. We finally turned southwest towards Macquarie island past Jaquemart Island and the tall rock stack called La Botte. My last view of the many headlands of the rugged south coast of the island receding into the mist only emphasised the air of mystery laced with raw reality that makes these Southern islands so memorable.
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