Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/399

Rh them all, the rata {Metrosideros robusta), the second largest tree in New Zealand. This strangler grows in the North Island, where it reaches a height of from fifty to one hundred feet and an average diameter of from three to twelve feet. Although known chiefly as an epiphyte, it also grows without support, but in that form its growth is much slower and the matured tree is smaller. Its reddish wood, covered with furrowed, reddish-brown bark, is hard and heavy, and has great strength and durability.

In New Zealand forests there are parasites which completely cover the trunks of trees, but none of them hugs to death and entombs its benefactor as the rata does. The life of this parasite reads like a romance. The rata is not a climber, as many persons believe; it begins its deadly work above the ground. Here, for example, is a leafy lord of the forest that for hundreds of years has successfully resisted decay and the assaults of many tempests. One day a tiny seed, blown by the wind or carried by a bird, finds lodgment high in one of its forks. Germinating in a bed of vegetable mould, the seed produces a sprout. After a time the nourishment of the mould becomes insufficient for its needs, and then it begins to run down the tree. As it descends it throws out lateral tendrils; these in turn develop transverse tendrils, and soon all of them diverge to encircle the tree.

The great tree is doomed; it has been attacked by one greater than itself. It is to be choked, hugged,