One species of the rata is an ordinary climber; another springs sometimes from the ground, sometimes from the fork of a tree into which the seed is blown or dropped.
Thence it throws out long rootlets, some to earth, others which wrap round the trunk on which it is growing.

Gradually this rata becomes a tree itself, kills its supporter, and growing round the dead stick, ends in almost hiding it from view.
[Footnote 1: The Alps, however, show much floral beauty, and the ground-flowers of the Auckland Islands, an outlying group of New Zealand islets, impressed the botanist Kirk as unsurpassed in the South Temperate Zone.] In the month of February, when the rata flowers in the Alps, there are valleys which are ablaze for miles with "Flowers that with one scarlet gleam Cover a hundred leagues, and seem To set the hills on fire." But the most gorgeous of all flowering trees, as distinguished from creepers, is the sea-loving pohutu kawa.

When the wind is tossing its branches the contrast is startling between its blood-red flowers and the dark upper side and white, downy under side of its leaves.
Like the Australians, New Zealand Colonists call their forest "bush." What in England might be called bush or brushwood is called "scrub" in the Colonies.
The wood of many of the trees is not only useful timber, but when cut and polished is often beautiful in grain.

Unhappily, their destruction goes on with rapid strides.

The trees, as is usually the case with those the wood of which is hard, grow slowly.