I guess that a Sunday visit to a reserve in Taihape (centre of the North Island) doesn't really count as part of my job. I'll tell you about it anyway, because it illustrates some of the problems and things that I, and other DoC staff, have to deal with.

The Taihape Scenic reserve was well known for it's divaricating shrubs. To most people divaricating shrubs look like a tangled mess. Think of a tumbleweed on a stalk and you're pretty close. This growth form tends to be a way for the plant to protect itself. Usually from winds or sun in dry conditions. New Zealand is unusual in that we have a very high number of divaricating shrubs, and we certainly aren't prone to an extremely dry climate. In fact the opposite is true, our forests are called temperate RAIN-forest for good reason.

Scientists think that maybe this form is so common in New Zealand because we had Moa, 3 m ostrich like birds, that ate vegetation. By being a tangled mess the plant might get it's outside leaves eaten by the Moa, but the inner ones are protected by the tough pointy branches. The reason that Moa gets the blame is because in quite a number of cases the shrub has quite different foliage once it passes the 3 m height mark. The leaves become bigger and juicier - once out of Moa reach.

Anyway, within this suite of tangled plants there are some very rare species, and some of these used to occur at the Taihape reserve. That was before the arrival of Old Man's Beard (Clematis vitalba). This clematis is a garden escapee and, unfortunately, a ferocious climber. Imagine a forest 30 m tall and totally draped by thick grey vines, a solid dense mass of vines totally covering all but the tallest trees. In the summer it is a solid mass of leaves. The vines totally take over the forest and the weight, the lack of nutrients and light, means that eventually all plants in that forest (other than the clematis) are doomed. Clematis can spread by suckering, and it has a fluffy seed that can either spread by wind, or float on water. When the Clematis is in full seed then the forest looks like it is wearing a white fluffy beard - hence Old Man's Beard. Seeds travel a long way.

Control of this weed is difficult in this reserve because of the sheer size of the problem. And it is not the only weed problem there either, just the worse and most obvious one at present. New Zealand is a very rich and lush country, just about anything can be grown here, and a lot of species become bad weeds. In fact, I believe Auckland has been nominated weed capital of the world, it has more weeds than any other place in the world.

So, weed eradication is one aspect of conservation work. Not very glamorous, nor very rewarding, because weeds are hard to beat, but it does take a lot of time and money.

The reason I went along on this trip, which was essentially a Wanganui Botanical Society trip, was to learn more about the plants in the reserve and learn to recognise them. For my PhD I dealt mostly with large trees and ignored anything smaller (there is only so much time in a day). However, in my new role as forest ecologist with DoC I really need to study up on all sorts of plants so that I can identify them in the field. CO, our resident DoC plant guru organised the trip and I figured that this was a great way to get know some of these confusing species (they tend to look rather similar).

It was a very pleasant outing, with lovely weather and interesting people. I wasn't quite the youngest there, a 2 year old got that privilege. I spend the day busily looking at plants, asking questions on how you could tell this one was different from the other, scribbling down the answers and trying to take photos in awkward positions. Much to my surprise I managed to find 3 of the rare species. I didn't know what they were, just knew that I hadn't been shown those in the reserve before. So grabbed a piece and showed CO, who then identified it for me and added it to the plant list for the reserve.

All the bits of plant I collected I took to work to dry. The idea behind that is that you can build up your own library of plants, with notes on how to recognise them. You note down when and where you collected the samples from too, just in case you come across something similar somewhere else.

So in a nutshell, I still have lots to learn. Not only about different plant species and weeds etc. but also about where some of these reserves are to be found. I took the long way home and came across a few more reserves that I read about in my daily work. I don't get to spend all my time out in the field you see. A lot of my time is taken up writing reports advising people on what to do. More about that another time.