Page:Through South Westland.djvu/47

Rh scarlet, brush-like stamens are nearly an inch long, growing in thick masses and covering the tops of the trees. Another variety is the rata vine, which climbs to the tops of the tallest forest trees; and their relative of the North Island, Metrosideros robusta, is perhaps one of the strangest. Apparently when the seed germinates high in the fork of some forest tree, it sends down roots to seek the ground. The roots join together and enclose the tree, gradually crushing the life out of it; but in the end it seems to become a tree itself. Specimens are known whose trunks even reach ten feet in diameter and the height of 100 feet. Later on we grew familiar with M. scandens, a climber with white flowers; and there are also a yellow and a pink rata. The leaves are dark green and pointed at both ends, and bear a certain similarity to each other in the different varieties.

We left the ratas behind, and rode down a straight vista of track between the brown pillars of the tree-ferns, with their beautiful fronds above our heads, to the little, old, forgotten inn at Taipo. Taipo means “The Devil.” At the door sat the owner, dozing in his chair, as he does the live-long summer day, for he is nearly blind. Everybody was old. The ancient servitor who took our horses was a toothless old Swiss, who babbled of the difficulties he had been put to to get his old-age pension. He had no birth certificate, and the authorities at last gave it to him on the strength