Finding the Light

When we were at Bluff on 13 Nov I wanted to take a look at the Stirling Point Lighthouse, one of the many navigation markers for ships. We parked where the tar-seal ends and then walked down the gravel no-exit lane to find the lighthouse. We’ve only seen it from a distance before. Southland, New Zealand

For:   Which Way Photo Challenge 15 November, 2018

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Which Way:  Stirling Point Lighthouse at Bluff

This post is more about the “way” rather than the lighthouse itself. Its spring in NZ and we were amazed to find that along with the expected native flowers, there’s a forest of Pride of Madeira thriving along the coastal edge in Bluff. We’ve seen this naturalised in dry, coastal areas further north but had no idea it was growing this far south! Pride of Madeira is a species of Echium.

In the above photo you can see flower spires of Pride of Madeira behind the sign, our native cabbage trees Cordyline australis flowering well, and in the foreground is another native plant – its from the potato family and rather weedy but has lovely flowers as you can see in the photo below. Both photos taken by Nigel

Above photo: Usually referred to by its Maori name of poroporo, the botanical name is Solanum laciniatum. The pretty flowers become green egg-shaped berries that ripen to yellow or yellow-orange. The berries are very pretty (but toxic). They can grow quite tall, up to about 3 metres high.

In the above photo you get a view of Stirling Point Lighthouse hiding behind dense spires of Pride of Madeira. We walked down the gravel lane to the lighthouse.

Above: another view of the lighthouse as we got closer, slightly obscured by the unopened flower heads of our native flax (Phormium sp.) The old dead head in the left bottom corner betrays the presence of agapanthus here as well, a South African plant.

Below: Stirling Point Lighthouse

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Two extra photos that I took of the plants:

The Pride of Madeira flower spires are TALL!

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Image credits: First two photos taken by Nigel, all the others by Liz
Posted by Liz; Exploring Colour (2018)