Huntleigh Park

Grey skies and a silver lining (5 minute read)

This article is free for everyone, but it’s a sample of what I’ll be writing more of for my paying subscribers from the start of February.

It delights me that I can see a sight like this minutes from the centre of Wellington (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

It seems as if summer has gone on strike. Wellington’s had day after day of southerly winds, strong enough to whip up plenty of whitecaps on the harbour. Of the last ten days, only two have had temperatures which nudged over 20^oC (that’s 68^oF for my American friends) and it’s mostly been much colder than that. In fact, five of those days have been around 10^oC colder than the average for January.

According to the fungi, it’s now autumn. A couple of days ago I spotted a field mushroom at the park across the road from me. Today, I found the best crop I’ve seen since 2020’s lockdown, when I first began foraging for them there. I had a mushroom omelette for lunch, and I’ve got more for tomorrow.

The positive side of the miserable weather is that most people are hunkered down at home. This is good news for someone with a difficult dog who doesn’t like seeing other dogs when she’s out walking. So, I pull on my waterproofs, put Donna in her harness and decide to explore a reserve I’ve never visited before, Huntleigh Park, between Ngaio and Crofton Downs. It’s part of an extensive area called the ‘Outer Green Belt’, which includes Tarikākā and Khandallah Park. I know very little about it, despite living only few kilometres away for 20 years.

I start at the Crofton Downs end with some trepidation, because there’s an off-leash dog area marked and I’m not sure how busy it will be. As we arrive, the only dog there is leaving, and the whole park has great visibility. There is plenty of space to move away and put Donna on leash if someone else turns up. So I let her have a good run around – she’s got far too much energy for a 12 year old dog.

Once she’s had a run and splashed about in the stream for a while, I put her back on leash and head into the forest. I hope that any other dogs we encounter will be leashed as well, and not just because she doesn’t want off-leash dogs running up to her. It’s technically possible that there could be kiwi around, since there’s a massive network of stoat traps from Porirua in the north right down to the South Coast, as part of the Capital Kiwi project. The trap network covers all of the farmland to the west of Wellington as well, more than 23,000 hectares. So far, there have been around 150 kiwi released, and there are reports of them turning up in the gardens of residents whose properties back onto the green belt.

The start of our walk isn’t promising. We cross a small bridge over the Korimako Stream, its banks lined with nothing but dense tradescantia. This plant is the bane of every forest restoration group, and I can see signs that someone is working on it. But they’ve got years of effort ahead of them.

But this sight saddens me. The stream’s banks should be thick with mosses, ferns and a diverse undergrowth (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

Soon, though, we pass the tradescantia and reach an area of massive tree ferns. I don’t know how old they are, but there are dozens of them and many are metres tall. There are only two different types, compared to the five found in Khandallah Park, but they are still a wonderful sight. I can almost imagine walking around a bend and seeing a small dinosaur munching away on one of them, because they give the forest a prehistoric feeling.

Then, I get my first surprise. I see a massive tree trunk with vertical strips of bark. Without looking too hard, I assume it’s a macrocarpa, a Californian species widely planted on farms, which has a similar form and bark. When I look up, though, it’s clearly not. The leaves are unmistakable – this is an old tōtara, a mighty native species valued for its durable timber. Unfortunately, this means that most of them were cut down. This tree has a broad but stubby trunk ending in a proliferation of branches. It probably survived because it was no good for timber.

Not far from the tōtara is another old, twisted tree – a tawa. Like the tōtara, tawa was once an important timber tree, but all the remaining ones around Wellington are the rejects. I’ve only recently realised that a number of tree species I always thought of as having contorted, crooked trunks aren’t typically like that. It’s just that all the ones with clean, straight trunks were cut down long ago.

A bigger surprise comes a little further along. I see it on the path first – masses of short, narrow leaves. I look around and see the distinctive, red-brown bark of a mataī tree. It looks as if someone took a large hammer to it – that’s honestly the only way to describe the texture. As Donna and I continue on, I see dozens of them, at least one with a trunk more than 30 centimetres in diameter. These aren’t rejects either. Some of them stand tall and straight, although mostly they are young. At one point, I pass a mass of tiny seedlings – hundreds, if not thousands, of them. It’s a joyful sight for me, because Khandallah Park has almost no mātai and the reserve I’m helping to restore has none. This thriving remnant can repopulate other reserves around Wellington, with the help of the kererū.

Mataī bark, mataī seedlings, tōtara trunk (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

Huntleigh Park has one more surprise for me, though, and it’s a surprise which makes me think I need to spend more time keeping an eye on this forest. I come across a ramarama plant, with its odd, bubbly-looking, leaves. Ramarama is a plant in real trouble, because it’s highly susceptible to the disease myrtle rust. I see two plants in Huntleigh Park. Neither has any sign of myrtle rust, but I don’t have my glasses or a hand lens with me, so I’m not completely sure they are clear. I should keep an eye on these plants, and see if I can find more in the reserve.

One other thing strikes me as I attempt to hold my phone steady to take a photo while also holding a leash with a hyperactive dog on the other end. It’s not great weather for myrtle rust right now – it’s certainly wet enough but it’s a fungus which thrives in warmth. Perhaps there’s a silver lining to this miserable weather after all.

Ramarama (image credit: Melanie Newfield)