Mid-Winters Day

How did that happen so quickly??. Seems like we’ve just had New Year. Every year is different of course, and for some of it at least my memory of past years is a bit hazy with regard specifics.

Rata Mast

But looking back the thing that springs most to mind was our Rata year.  Rata masts at irregular intervals, in general the longer the interval the better the mast. And not every tree gets the memo, with some not flowering at all, and some of those playing catch up the following year. For Stewart Island we expect a mast event to occur over the New Year for maybe 2/3 weeks. There is one tree above the wharf on Ulva which flowers every year and I can remember only once it failing. But it will generally show blooms as early as late October -early November. But never a “heavy” show.  But this year was one out of the box.  Flowering started early.. with some showing mid November, and it went through until late December, with just remnants by the 1st week of January. So running maybe 3 weeks  early start and finish. And it was spectacular, with trees just laden with blooms.  If not the best I’ve seen certainly right up there in the top years.

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An Odd One

One of the odd plants we look at is a tiny creeping herb with even smaller greenish yellow flowers, Flowers so small I use a magnifying app on my phone to show my guests. I have found only one clump on Ulva. With the help of Hugh Wilsons excellent book “Stewart Island Plants” ISBN 978-0-9583299-5-8 ….. I THINK it is Nertera ciliata. It flowers around Christmas, and generally the clump I look at will have 10 to 15 blooms. This year just one. As I mentioned a bit of an oddity but a good place to show guests what a useful thing a magnifying glass or smart phone app is. Opens up a whole new world.

A lot more common is Lantern Berry. In fact generally  a prolific flowerer. This year only a very few blooms.

Lantern Berry. The fruit looks like a tiny Oriental lantern

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So Why the Oddities this year.

Short answer…… I haven’t a clue.  It was certainly not the wettest summer we’ve had, but far from the driest either. It was noticeable that most species that did flower were somewhat earlier that I would have expected, with a quite brief flowering period.  Though rata was a quite long season compared with “normal”

One of my guests suggested Global Warming, which of course started another discussion. Most for, some doubters. So when we returned from Ulva I took them all up Petersons Hill. There are a couple of large Pohutukawa trees there. Planted long before I arrived in 1969.  Around 2004 Diane & Phillip Smith, whose property they are on started to notice seedlings along the roadside. That little corner is without doubt the warmest micro climate around the village.  Whatever we may think about climate change the plants always know, and natural seeding so far south of Pohutuka’s normal range north of New Plymouth/Gisbourne is surely proof things are getting warmer. We even have a couple of self seeded plants in our garden. Doubtless from plants we bought down from Great Barrier in the early ’90’s.

Solar Output Summer vs Winter.

A couple of days ago we had a perfect demonstration of the big issue with solar power this far south in the winter.  We are at latitude  46.55s and our mid summer altitude of the sun at midday is around 70 degree above the horizon … or almost directly overhead. On midwinters day the sun is around 20 deg above the horizon. Much lower The suns output is degraded by the depth of atmosphere it has to pass through to get to our panels, hence the difference.

On a bright summer day our 2 arrays will easily reach a total out put of 11 kw. In winter, on a similarly bright day we will be luck to reach 7kw. Add to this on a fine summer day we’ll get around 14 hours of productive daylight, in winter maybe 7 hours.