The Tuakura (_Dicksonia squarrosa_) and the Ponga (_Cyathea dealbata_) are the two principal varieties of fern-tree. Groves of them, overshadowing some lonely creek, at the bottom of a wild, wooded gully, are indeed a sight to see. Growing to twenty, thirty, or forty feet in height, the graceful drooping fronds that spread around a single tree form a natural arbour, capable of sheltering a number of persons.
The Raurau (_Pteris aquilina_, _var. esculenta_) is a fern of the nature of English bracken. It covers all the better-class open lands, and occurs among the undergrowth of the bush. It sometimes grows very large, the fronds overtopping one's head as one walks or rides through it. The root is a Maori edible.
The ivy-ferns, climbing-ferns, or creeper-ferns (_Polypodia_, _sp._, _Hymenophylla_, _sp._), are very beautiful. They are everywhere in the bush, ascending to the tops of the tallest trees, twining on every limb, and throwing out bunches of fronds to hide it. Some have broad, glossy leaves as big as a table-top; others are digitate, pedatisect, tripinnate, and all the rest of it, or assume strange new shapes, like that of the kidney-fern (_Trichomanes reniforme_), for instance.
Like the ferns, the mosses of the country are legion in number, and marvellously luxuriant in growth. They, too, are everywhere. Great masses of moss form hanging-gardens on the trees; for, collecting a quantity of detritus and moisture, a sort of soil is formed, in which small ferns, tawhera, orchids, plants of various kinds, and fungi, flourish. In and about these hanging-gardens, these ferneries high up upon the great trees, are the homes and habitations of birds, rats, bees, beetles, lizards, and butterflies.
The Harakeke or Korati (_Phormium tenax_) is the justly celebrated New Zealand flax. It is plentiful everywhere, on bush-land and open-land, rich soil and poor soil, hill and dale, from the Reinga to the Bluff. Throughout the North you cannot go a hundred yards in any direction without seeing a clump of it. In many districts of both islands it covers hundreds of acres entirely.
Flax resembles the English flag, or iris, in appearance, but the blades are thicker, heavier, and glossy. Usually, from four to six feet long, in favourable situations they grow to ten or twelve feet. The colour is a bright green, variegated in some of the species with white, yellow, or red. The plant grows in dense clumps, or bushes, and from the centre of each root rises a tall stem bearing flowers, white, yellow, salmon, flesh-pink, red, in different varieties. The flowers are peculiarly rich in honey; and Maori children are fond of sucking them. The resulting seed is oily and resinous, the seed-stems being commonly used for torches.