Spent

There is a changing of the guard in New Zealand’s open landscapes at the moment.  Erect and spent flax (Harakeke, Phormiun tenax) flowerheads from last year create a swathe of battered and shriveled sentries waiting for the new season’s replacements. The old flowerheads are dry and brittle. Their stalk is transitioning from black to grey and shards of the last years flower cases along the stem waft in the breeze. New plump and green crop of flowerheads are growing up fast amongst them.

Like for many plants, the strength of flowering of flaxes waxes and wains between years.  Exceptional good flowering years can have 75-times more flowers than the bad years, and there is an underlying 3 yearly on average fluctuation in the number of flowerheads produced [Source].

The phenomenon of “masting”, where a plant seed production varies enormously between years, has often been attributed to weather in the previous years being conducive to growth or pollination, or to the parents matching heavy seeding years when seedling establishment will be favourable.
 
Other ecologists think fluctuations in the stored energy of parent drive flowering rhythms – when the parents have exhausted their store for last years’ flowering, they may not be able to muster the full effort in the next year because they are spent and they need some years to recover.  Other ecologists have suggested that mast seeding is the plant’s evolutionary strategy to escape seed predators like insects, birds and mice. The “predator satiation” idea is that if the parents produce their seed in bursts, the predators cannot possible find and eat the seeds in time before they germinate. If instead they seeded in steady but lower amounts each year, the predators could wipe out most of the future crop.

Nature's rhythms are part delight ecologists and photographers alike. I enjoy the forest of spent flax flowerheads and rejoice in the new growth poking up between at this time of the year. They promise a coming burst of red and orange flowers in autumn and a barrage of bird song -  the honeyeater birds (tui, bellbird and silvereyes) gather to fight it out between them for the flax’s nectar.