Astelia chathamica, kakaha, Moriori flax, or Chatham Island astelia is endemic to the Chatham Islands where it is known from Chatham Island and Pitt Island. It grows in and occupies a range of moist sites, and can be found on forest floors, cliffs, rock bluffs, lakeshore scarps and stream margins, as well as in swamps. It was formerly widespread, but now tends to be restricted to sheltered, rocky, or protected spots in the bush or scrub where it is safe from grazing, as browsing and physical destruction by stock and feral animals have impacted severely on this species. This nationally endangered plant is the largest and most easily recognised species of astelia, and its robust, broad, long flax-like silvery leaves that are clad in silvery hairs make it quite an outstanding plant in both its natural environment, and in any garden. It forms a large clump of 1.5m or so tall, and is extremely hardy to most conditions. Male and female flowers are found on separate plants, and the male flower stalk is very thick and bears dark green, scented flowers, while the female plant has pale, greenish-white flowers. Flowering occurs from October to December, while the orange or red fruit may be seen from February to July.

Asplenium oblongifolium or Shining Spleenwort is endemic to the Kermadec, Three Kings, North, South, and Chatham Islands. In the South Island known from the Marlborough sounds south to Hokitika and Banks Peninsula. It is found in coastal to montane regions (but mostly found within coastal and lowland areas). It can occupy a diverse range of habitats from coastal cliffs and rock stacks to deep forest where it may be an epiphyte or grow on the ground. It is easily grown although often rather slow to establish. An attractive and popular plant widely used for mass plantings in shaded sites. It is an excellent pot plant. Be vigilant for scale and mealy bug infestations which are a bane to the cultivation of all New Zealand asplenia.

Coprosma virescens is endemic to the North and South Islands from the ranges east of Gisborne, and especially around Taihape south. It is scarce in Nelson and apparently absent from Marlborough and absent from Westland, but is common in Canterbury south to Southland.
It grows in lowland to lower montane areas in forest and shrubland, on well drained to poorly draining fertile soils. It is an attractive divaricating orangeish or olive green bushy shrub with extremely tangled wide-angled branches growing 2-3m tall. It has pairs of small pointed oval leaves on flattened leaf stalks. Female plants bear white fruit with small black dots from May to July after flowering from September to November.  It is an excellent garden plant suitable for growing as a specimen, in groups or for hedging.  It does best in full sun but will tolerate moderate shade. Should be planted in a free draining but moist, fertile soil, but can be tolerant of poor soils and dry conditions.

Myrsine divaricata or weeping matipo is endemic to the North, South, Stewart and Auckland Islands. It is found in lowland to higher mountain forest and scrubland from sea-level to 1220m asl from Mongonui and Kaitaia southwards in the North Island, although uncommon north of the Waikato, then throughout the South, Stewart, and on the Auckland and Campbell Islands. A very attractive and distinctive, much-branched shrub up to 3 to 3.6m tall, with a stiffly weeping habit of its branchlets that is most unusual. Flowers and fruits are usually hidden away within the bush, and the purplish to violet coloured fruits can take a year to develop after flowering. It is very hardy, but is best grown in a good soil that is enriched with plenty of humus.

Encouraging lizards to your garden

New Zealand has nearly 60 species of lizard that fall into two types - skinks and geckos. Skinks have smooth, shiny skin, often brownish in colour. They look like snakes with legs. Geckos have velvety, baggy-looking skin and broad heads. They are usually green, yellow or grey. Both eat insects, spiders and flies and geckos also drink nectar. In addition, skinks and geckos love small fleshy fruits and help to spread the seeds of some native plants:    

·         to attract skinks and geckos into your garden, you'll need to provide them safe hiding places under rocks and logs

·         plant dense, wiry groundcover, vines and climbers

·         mulch with chunky-grade bark and encourage leaf lifter to build under trees where you don't mow

·         make rock piles where lizards can bask in the sun but hide in the crevices if danger threatens. Old scoria dry-stone walls are great places for skinks!

·         plant native groundcover shrubs with juicy berries like Coprosma and Muehlenbeckia and nectar-bearing flax and pohutukawa.

Pets as predators! While you may be encouraging lizards into your garden, you need to make your garden a safe place for the lizards you invite in:

• have your cat neutered or spayed so they can't produce unwanted kittens
• keep your cat well fed and have moving toys for it to play with, so it is less inclined to chase lizards
• keep your cat indoors overnight so nocturnal insects and lizards have free reign of your garden
• put a bell on your cat's collar.

Did you know?

·         Lizards help scatter the seeds of some of our native plants and may also pollinate their flowers.

·         Lizards will love your backyard if they have food and shelter.

1. Prepare your garden before making homes for lizards

Untidy gardens are great for lizards. They need places to hide and cover when hunting, feeding and resting, they also need shelter when it’s really hot or really cold. Lizards like to squeeze into body sized holes no more than 5-19 mm wide. They like plenty of holes because many lizards are territorial so they need their own space. They like their homes to stay in one place too. If it’s disturbed, they’ll move out and they might not have anywhere else to go. Lizards need escape sites and they don’t really mind what they’re made of. Any old non-toxic building like old roofing iron can become a good home for lizards. Plants can grow around or over them so they can look quite tidy. Look around your backyard and find a warm, dry, sunny place. The most important thing for lizards is cover. You can use rock or wood piles to create some cover.

2. Use rock piles to create cover for lizards

Use old concrete, bricks and stones and stack them loosely so there are plenty of cracks and holes. Spiders, slaters and beetles will head inside, especially when it’s cold. That’s good news for the lizards that feed on them. Smear yoghurt on some stones and lichens might grow.  If your rock pile turns into a rockery, plant native groundcovers between the rocks.

3. Use wood piles to create cover for lizards

A good pile of dead wood is an adventure playground for lizards. Pile up a few logs and bits of wood and leave them to slowly rot, undisturbed. Let the fungi grow! It takes hold and helps recycle rotting wood by breaking it down. It makes good food for slugs and snails which in turn attracts birds.

4. Grow plants in your backyard that will attract lizards

Plant thickly is the rule. Lizards need safe habitats to run to when cats are on the prowl. That means thick ground-cover, vines and dense plant growth on banks. Berry or nectar producing plant species are good, especially native divaricating shrubs, and if you have a range of plants the lizards will have plenty to eat, all year round. Coprosma species and kawakawa provide fruit and flax, while manuka and rata give nectar. Ferns, tussock grasses and rengarenga provide thick ground cover and attract insects for the lizards to eat. Plants like speargrass and the shrubby tororaro offer protection from predators.  Vines like New Zealand clematis and climbing rata connect habitats, and cabbage trees form in clumps for good cover. A local nursery should have a range of plants native to your area and if you grow organically or limit the sprays you use, your lizards will do very well indeed.

5. Wait patiently

Make a lizard friendly backyard and wait patiently. If your lizards have already gone, it may be a little while before they return.

PLANTS SUITABLE FOR ENCOURAGING LIZARDS INTO YOUR GARDEN

Aciphylla species                                                                                

Anemanthele lessoniana 

Aristotelia fruiticosa                                                                           

Arthropodium cirratum                                                                       

Austrofestuca littoralis

Carex species (some)       

Chionochloa species                                                                          

Clematis species

Coprosma ‘Black Cloud’ *

Coprosma ‘Flat Freddy’ *  

Coprosma ‘Hawera’ *                                                                         

Coprosma acerosa                                                                             

Coprosma crassifolia                                                                         

Coprosma petrei

Coprosma propinqua                                                                         

Coprosma pumila

Coprosma rhamnoides                                                                      

Coprosma rubra 

Coprosma rugosa                                                                               

Coprosma taylori

Coprosma wallii                                                                                  

Cordyline australis                                                                              

Corokia cotoneaster          

Discaria toumatou

Festuca species                                                                                   

Fuchsia procumbens         

Gaultheria antipoda                                                                            

Griselinia littoralis               

Hoheria angustifolia                                                                           

Kunzea ericioides              

Leptospermum scoparium                                                                

Leucopogon fasciculatus 

Melicytus alpinus                                                                                 

Metrosideros carminea                                                                      

Metrosideros diffusa          

Muehlenbeckia astonii      

Muehlenbeckia complexa                                                                 

Neterra depressa               

Nothofagus species                                                                            

Parsonsia capsularis         

Parsonsia heterophylla                                                                      

Pennatia corymbosa         

Pimelea prostrata                                                                                

Poa species         

Podocarpus nivalis

Podocarpus totara                                                                               

Pratia angulata                                                                                    

Pseudopanax arboreus

                                                                                                               

*  Cultivars with suitable fruit

Every lizard in New Zealand is absolutely protected - you can't take them from the wild, and permits are needed to keep them.

Aristotelia serrata, makomako or wineberry is endemic to the North, South and Stewart Islands where it is commonly found from sealevel to 1060m asl in lowland to mountain forest (one of the photos is of one growing out of limestone rock up Isolation Creek a small tributary of the Waima (Ure) river located a few kilometres south of Ward, Marlborough). It is particulary abundant in second-growth bush, where slips have occurred. A very handsome fast growing tree up to 10m that is at it's best in the spring, when the leaves are just commencing to break and the bare branches are covered with large clusters of small rose-pink flowers during October, followed by small dark red- black berries which attracts birds. As male and female flowers are generally on different trees, both sexes must be grown to obtain berries. It makes a great specimen tree, but because it is very common in the bush most people tend to overlook it for that purpose. It prefers a good moist soil and an open situation, but in colder areas it is deciduous and better in a more sheltered site where it is ideal in semi-shade. Ideal plant for erosion control. Few native trees have a wider distribution and it is usually one of the first to reappear when the forest is cleared, or after a fire and the light is let in. Like numerous other plants it was collected by Joseph Banks & Daniel Solander. The only economic use was the wood had been used to produce charcoal for the manufacture of gunpowder in earlier years. The berries were eaten by Maori children, and early European settlers have been said to have used the berries to make jelly or jam. Some may have possibly made wine from them as well. It also had a number of medicinal uses.

 Pseudowintera colorata, horopito or pepper tree is endemic to the North, South and Stewart Islands, where it is found in coastal, lowland, or montane forest margins and shrubland from sea-level to 1200m asl. It is an erect upright, much-branched. A shrub up to 3.5m tall, it has is one of New Zealand’s most distinctive and easily recognised shrubs due to its colourful, often mottled or speckled with red, pale yellow-green leaves that are a pale bluish-white underneath. It has yellow flowers from September to March followed by dark fleshy fruits from March -April. It prefers a good soil and although it can tolerate quite dry conditions it does appreciate watering during dry spells. Grow in sun or semi shade.  Its peppery tasting leaves are now often used for culinary purposes, and a can be found as an ingredient in a number of food products. The leaves of the pepper tree were often used by Maori women when weaning a child, and the crushed leaves were rubbed on their breasts to give them a bitter taste. The sap was also used to cure skin diseases.

Urtica frerox, Ongaonga, or NZ tree nettle is endemic, and is found throughout the North and South Islands reaching Otago as its southern limit. It is commonly found up to a height of 600 metres above sea level, in the fringes of bushland, in coastal and lowland forest margins and shrublands, where It often forms thickets.  Ongaonga is a small tree, soft-wooded, or shrub, growing up to three metres high, with a trunk about 12cm diameter. It has many branches, with the branches tending to be intertwined. The leaves, branches and branchlets all have stout stinging hairs which are silicified - the head breaks off on contact, and the poison is injected into the puncture. There are male and female flowers with the sexes appearing on separate trees. Like other parts of the tree, the flower spikes bear stinging hairs. Flowering is from late spring to early autumn.

Tree Nettle is dangerous to livestock and man. The brittle-pointed stinging hairs cause intense pain and both man and animals may even die. Horses and dogs are the only known affected animals, and horses have been known to die quite soon after blundering into tree nettles. (Some losses in both horses and dogs still occur).

Fatal poisoning in man was first recorded in 1961 when a young man died from the effect of tree nettle stinging. The facts are important enough to warrant a detailed account. Two lightly-clad men, 18 and 21 years old, went shooting in hill country of the Ruahine Ranges in the late afternoon of 26 December. On their return in the early evening they hurried through what one described as "a lot of stinging nettle and it felt like a series of needle pricks". Not long after, perhaps less than an hour, one of them complained of stomach ache and appeared to be exhausted. Partial paralysis set in when he lay down to rest; he had difficulty in breathing and a short time later he could not see. He was rescued, but died five hours later after being admitted to hospital. His companion suffered similarly, though not to the same extent, and did not die. Three Home Guard horses died from stings in the Hutt Valley in 1944.

This plant is also important because of its ecological value , as the Red Admiral caterpillars require stinging nettles to breed. Red Admiral caterpillars will eat most native and non-native nettles, but the eggs are laid almost exclusively (with the exception of a Scrub Nettle or two) on native Nettles. Yellow admirals prefer the non-native kinds including Common Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) and Annual or Dwarf Nettle (Urtica urens).

Corokia buddleioides, korokio or korokia-tarango is endemic to the North Island. It is found coastally and in lowland forest and forest margins from sea-level to 900m asl., in the North Island from Mangonui to Rotorua, and the East Cape. It is a very attractive much branched shrub of 1.8 - 3.6m tall that can thrive in a number of conditions and is and excellent plant for a hedge. It has yellow flowers from October to December followed by dark red drupes. It was first collected by Allan Cunningham when he was in the Bay of Islands district in 1826.