Ruud Kleinpaste: Colourful native plants to look for

This time of the year a wonderful Pohutukawa “shrub” is flowering its little heads off: Metrosideros carminia known as the crimson rata; a Native in the North Island all the way down to Taranaki and Hawkes Bay. It comes as a shrub when you get them from cuttings, but they’ll move up like tree climbers when they emerge from seeds. Pollinators love them – and so do I.

Favourite food of tui and bellbirds, as well as silvereyes and wood pigeons (kereru). Kowhai come in many different species and heights; there are fabulous, gnarled forms which, in themselves, are beautifully sculptured. Divaricating shrubs!!

Muehlenbeckia astonii. A Native plant that could be your new hedge, or your sculpted shrub, or even a suitable nesting site for native birds. It’s all about elegant little leaves, hanging from a zig-zagging system of branches that you will only find in Aotearoa. In winter the whole shrub will change colours to a Dark-Orange that will stand out, no matter what the weather is like. White flowers – and all this is endemic.

May I introduce you to the Corokia - another yellow Native of our country. It’s full of flowers at this time of the year; also with zig-zag twigs and Endemic distribution – we know how to grow weird and wonderful natives! Often on these flowering shrubs you will find native bees sucking nectar for their off-spring, pollinating the flowers and creating large amounts of seeds for our landscapes

Horopito (Pseudowintera colorata) is another one of those shrubs that stands out in its colour – It’s native to New Zealand, and our local “garden fiddlers” have managed to breed a range of varieties in all sorts of colours. If you want to see them spectacularly bunched together in our native habitat, go to the Catlins: you’ll fall in love with them! Oh – and the leaves are edible… lovely and hot.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Rude climb past as our men in the garden Kyoda,
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Sir, how are you.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm very well, yeah, very well, thank you. It's the
time of year where if you're looking for a little
bit of color in the garden, you've got a couple
of little options on the native front that could add
a bit of pop.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, that's right. I'm looking at the moment the princess
and the tree in front of me as your cherry
tree that exactly finished almost its flowering, and people love
these things. But I thought, you know what, we've got
so many good New Zealand endemic trees. I love that
word endemic. It only occurs in New Zealand. Number one,

(00:54):
I've got a it's not a real tree, it's a
shrub in this case, and it could be a climber
called Metrosidros carminia. It's actually closely related to the Purutakawa, okay,
and it is unbelievably beautifully red at this gorgeous I think,
you know, if you really want something that is standing
out of this town of the year, yeah, get yourself

(01:15):
a metroc. There's cherminia. It's called the crimson rata, so
it's actually like a rata tree.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah right, but it.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Doesn't always climb up, and it depends on whether you
take it from a cutting or whether you take it
from seeds. And if you take it from cutting it
becomes a shrub. Where you take it from seeds, it
climbs up your house. I was there.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, very good.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Okay, Yeah, number two cofi. Everybody knows cold by a yep,
you got one of you get one that arm as well.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I wish we did, we don't. I mean, I just know.
That's why I've got the still got the bird feeders out,
just to bring in the two and the and the
tohoe and things, because I mean the core fire is
just an abste favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
It is absolutely and you got it and that's iters.
It does all the right stuff. You got it in one.
That's exactly what's what chippy about. There's a third one
I've got here and it's rulin Beckia estoni. That's a
real endemic too. Ruland Beckier is one of those genera
if you like it only really get gets going in
New Zealand native plant of course it is quite common

(02:21):
around Katerretti Spit, you know where it is of course
in Canterbury, yep. And it has this wonderful zig zagging
system of branches which which looks quite weird, but it
actually makes the bush really really dense. And then in
the winter time it's kind of this really strange dark

(02:42):
brownie orange color as well, so it changes its color.
It's just amazing. Rule Becky as and I always good
to plant right right.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
New Zealand nice, Okay, have you heard of that? I'm
not sure?

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yellow one.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, I think I think I recognize the photograph. I've
looked it up and I've got the photograph here you've
sent through, so I think I recognize it from that,
but I haven't.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Okay. It's also endemic also if you like the New
Zealand plant only in New Zealand. But here comes the thing.
As an entomologist, this is what I do with this.
Over the year. I go to the Karakia and there
are hundreds of native bees swarming around these flowers. That
yellow is protecting them like anything. And those little bees,

(03:29):
those tiny little native bees are sucking their nectar and
taking it back to the to their own little home
for their offspring. It's just it just gives you this
wonderful feeling of yeah, it's the spring May.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
And then finally Hot Pito, which is of course a
pappetry yep, so the wintery a Colorado and it tests
these amazing colors of leaves with red and yellow and
orange and also of colored. If you really want to
see the best places, as far as I'm concerned, where
you can see this hot Pito, you go to the Kittlins.
That's where you fall in love with Hot Pito fantastically.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
I thank you, and we'll make sure that we put
them up on the website, and we'll put the photos
up as well, so everyone can have a bit of
a look and imagine what it might look at their place. Hey,
look like at their place. Thank you very much. Soon
go well, let's rudclimb past in the garden for us
this Saturday morning.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
To give for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame,
listen live to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday,
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