The cool, noiseless forests of New Zealand are deep jungles, giant
thickets, like those tropic labyrinths where traveller and hunter have
to cut their path through tangled bushes and interlacing creepers.
Their general hue is not light but dark green, relieved, it is true,
by soft fern fronds, light-tinted shrubs, and crimson or snow-white
flowers. Still the tone is somewhat sombre, and would be more
noticeably so but for the prevalent sunshine and the great variety of
species of trees and ferns growing side by side. The distinction of
the forest scenery may be summed up best in the words dignity and
luxuriance. The tall trees grow close together. For the most part
their leaves are small, but their close neighbourhood hinders this
from spoiling the effect. The eye wanders over swell after swell, and
into cavern after cavern of unbroken foliage. To the botanist who
enters them these silent, stately forests show such a wealth of
intricate, tangled life, that the delighted examiner hardly knows
which way to turn first.

[Illustration: A WESTERN ALPINE VALLEY

Photo by MORRIS, Dunedin.]

As a rule the lower part of the trunks is branchless; stems rise up
like tall pillars in long colonnades. But this does not mean that they
are bare. Climbing ferns, lichens, pendant grasses, air-plants, and
orchids drape the columns. Tough lianas swing in air: coiling roots
overspread the ground. Bushes, shrubs, reeds and ferns of every size
and height combine to make a woven thicket, filling up and even
choking the spaces between trunk and trunk. Supple, snaky vines writhe
amid the foliage, and bind the undergrowth together.