What plant is that?

What plant is that?

What plant is that?
Last week I went to Warkworth to a course to learn the names of plants.  It was really interesting.  I don't know all the names yet but now I know how I can find out. We had to learn how to describe them with the right words and how to take a sample without hurting the plant.  
Which plant do you think this is? 
It is a small plant with small leaves, from 3 - 6 cm long.
The leaves are bright green.  They have 3 lobes and are palmate in shape. The stems are covered in fine hairs.  The leaves are green underneath and have veins running from the stem to the tip.   This plant is endangered and only grows in 3 places in the wild. 

                                                                                                                    Today we planted 80 Hibiscus richardsonii on Limestone/ Matekohe Island.  I hope they will all grow.  This man is Kipp.  He teaches at Whangarei Boys High School.  He was a Teacher Fellow too.  He grew hundreds of these plants from seeds.

                                                                                                                   

Phillip Kippenburger

On Monday and Tuesday I went deep into the forest to help cut tracks so that poison can be laid in traps to kill the possums and rats.  Can you see what we caught?  We have to kill the pests or they will eat all the trees, the bird's eggs and chicks and even all the food that the birds need to survive.  When they are gone, little birds like this riroriro can live safely in the forest.  If we get rid of the predators then maybe we can bring back the kiwi and the kōkako to live in the forest too.
 

Riroriro

 I have been nailing gecko covers on to the trees.  I am hoping that the lizards will come and live under the covers where they are safe from rats.  Next year we will come back and look underneath to see how many we can find.  If we find lots of weta and geckos it means that we have killed most of the predators (because they weren't there to eat the weta and gecko). It also means that the forest is healthy again.

 








This is Ben and Dylan. 
They are herpetologists.  
Herpetologists study everything about lizards.  They have came to teach me how to put up the gecko covers and where to look for geckos.  So far I have only seen one live copper skink and one dead one.

Copper Skink