Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Short-tailed bat munching a dactylanthus flower

No, this post isn’t about a V. C. Andrews novel, it’s about Department of Conservation (DOC) staff in Taranaki putting plants in cages. But this isn’t some kind of strange botanical punishment – it’s to protect endangered dactylanthus plants from being munched by possums.

Dactylanthus taylorii, also known as wood rose, is rare and special among New Zealand’s flora because it’s our only completely parasitic flowering native plant. It grows on the roots of its host tree and has no leaves of its own.

It’s under threat because possums enjoy scoffing the flowers before they have time to go to seed. The cages keep the possums away, but let through rats and mice, which pollinate the flowers. Prior to the introduction of rats and mice, dactylanthus was pollinated by native short-tailed bats, which are attracted by pheromones, as can be seen in this video of a snacking bat from Te Ara’s ‘Evolution of plants and animals‘ entry.

The cages are part of DOC’s dactylanthus recovery plan, and they also want to locate populations of the plants – so should you happen to see any on your strolls through the bush, you can help by letting DOC know where they are.

The eager editor

Another departure from Te Ara prompts a trip down memory lane and a chance encounter with an embarrassing archive of institutional memories.

Way back when, in the days when Te Ara had gestated from a sparkle in Jock Phillips’s eye to a rapidly growing neonate, its gross weight was bulked up by the incorporation of a fully formed, indeed rather mature, fellow encyclopedia.

McLintock’s magnum opus

A. H. (Archibald) McLintock’s classic An encyclopaedia [sic] of New Zealand was published by the Government Printer in three volumes in 1966. The print run of 30,000 sold out in three months and it was never reprinted though remains widely available in second-hand bookshops, a copy in every library in the country, quite a few to be found gathering dust on the top shelves of small-town junk shops throughout the land. Digitised in India, TEI-ised in Wellington by the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, Te Ara swallowed it whole and incorporated it as a stopgap until we finished our coverage of the entire world of Kiwi knowledge. We skited (skote? skate?) about it to the world (or at least to anyone who read the DigiCULT.Info newsletter in November 2004).

Taming the unruly XML

Of course it didn’t happen entirely automagically and this post was prompted by the departure of our long-serving production editor, Fiona Oliver, who delivered the not-so-small but perfectly formed behemoth, tamed and caged the beast. It (and this) is a tribute to her strength of purpose, patience, and reach.

I doubt if there’s anyone in the country, or on the planet, who knows so much about what lies between its brown buckram boards.

A civilised conclave

Of encyclopedic interest only, perhaps, is this hilarious period piece – a re-enactment of a Te Ara ‘resource meeting’, at which resourcers tremble, writers wail, and editors harrumph from the distance among the tendrils of the vineyard in which we labour. Another sow’s ear? You’d never know it from this candid shot of creativity in action. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. O tempora, o mores.

Edible Rita Angus

We’re a creative bunch here at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, as evidenced by a recent social club cake decorating competition. For my money, the outstanding entry was the three-dimensional recreation of Rita Angus’s well-known painting ‘Cass’, which depicts the rural Cass railway station and the looming mountains beyond (pictured at left). You will be pleased to know that, as well as looking gorgeous, the mountains – which were painstakingly constructed from blocks of chocolate cake, cemented with ganache and covered with melted white chocolate – were delicious.

The cake creators included our colleagues from NZlive.com, who were inspired by the exhibition, Rita Angus: Life and Vision, which opened at Te Papa last weekend. This exhibition honours the centenary of her birth, and brings together almost 200 of her works, including paintings, sketches and studies.

Rita Angus is well known for her modernist interpretations of New Zealand landscapes. Two of these feature in Te Ara: ‘Central Otago‘ is part of our entry on New Zealand’s light, and ‘Mountains, Cass‘ illustrates our Mountains entry. Her watercolour of a Chatham Islands Moriori, in our entry on Ideas of Māori origin, is one of her many portraits and self-portraits. My favourite of these is Rutu, in which she depicts herself as a goddess of mixed Polynesian and European heritage.

Although she grew up in Palmerston North, she is mainly associated with the art scenes of Christchurch and Wellington. She lived for many years in a cottage in Sydney Street in Wellington, which is now used for an artists’ residency. I was lucky enough to be able to visit it once, when some friends were living there. According to them, artist Dane Mitchell was correct about the paranormal activity (he created an exhibition exploring paranormal activity in the Rita Angus Cottage and apparently interviewed her via a medium), as they believed Rita Angus’s ghost was still resident. But they told me he was wrong about which chair she liked to sit in.

Outside the Eastern Southland Gallery in Gore

On 19 June the weekly newspaper The Independent featured an unusual image of New Zealand on its front page - it was upside down and had Southland at the top, crowded with buildings and general busy-ness. The rest of the country was shrunken and empty.

This tribute to recent boom times in the southern province is very timely for Te Ara, as we’re now in the final stages of preparing our entry on Southland and Fiordland – the 11th out of 22 regions.

Southland has had a long history. In the early 19th century the shores of Foveaux Strait were one of the first meeting zones between Māori and Pākehā – mostly sealers and whalers.

The Wakatipu and other gold rushes in the early 1860s prompted a short-lived boom, as did Vogel’s immigration and public works programme in the early 1870s.

In the late 19th and early 20th century the province grew rapidly as swamps were drained, forests cleared, and dairy factories and meat freezing works thrived. Invercargill grew apace to match.

The 20 years after the Second World War was another golden age for farming, when Gore was reputedly the country’s richest town and Invercargill one of its most prosperous and established cities.

To help us in preparing our entry, we’re calling all Southlanders, past, present and future (more people are going to live in Southland than leaving). We’re looking for pictures and other resources about Southland and Fiordland, to bring the entry alive.

We’ve created a Te Ara group on Flickr, which anyone can join and contribute photos to. You can also contribute personal accounts or family stories about Southland or its history, by filling in a ‘Your Stories’ form online.

So help us make sure ‘our’ Southland meets ‘your’ Southland.