Saturday, April 12, 2014

Awhitu Peninsular


Today we were fortunate to have access to McConnell's farm wetland and saltmarsh at Pollock on the Awhitu Peninsular. The site is an area of manuka swampland blending into saltmarsh with a steep cliff on the northern side with native bush.

 Tricia was leading the walk for Bot Soc and it was good to see many familiar faces from different organisations enjoying a warm sunny walk to the foreshore.


Wetlands and Saltmarsh are probably my favourite places to explore and I could have spent all day just exploring the little stream that trickled its way to the sea with red and blue damselfly alighting on the Isolepis prolifera  







 





Amongst many things we learnt today is  that Tmesipteris elongate is the duller of these two and Tmesipteris lanceolata is quite shiny by comparison. This was a challenge for me to show both in one photograph.
















On route to Pollock I revisited the historic kohekoe church, built 1886 and was pleased to see that it was well cared for as there had been some concern when it was up for sale during 2012