Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/404

270 injury. And when the tree is cut down it grows again.

Outside its forests one of the most beautiful plants of New Zealand is the toitoi, or toetoe. It is similar to the Argentine pampas grass, and is by far the tallest grass in the Dominion. It grows in large bunches from six to ten feet high, and often its flower stalks are a yard higher. Nodding from each plant are a score or more of feathery-tipped stems, varying from light to dark yellow and brightening the darkest background. The toitoi's drooping plumes I have seen continually waving and bowing along marshy water-courses, in flax swamps, beside rivers, up small gullies where tea-tree and bracken fern divided the land, and on lonely hillsides in solitary clumps.