To shoot the feature on our rarest native forget-me-not, Brennan Thomas had clambered around Hawke’s Bay mountains in the chilly pre-dawn. He’d documented a nursery in Taradale, and people tending the forget-me-nots at Napier’s Centennial Gardens.
But to do this beauty justice he still needed some glamour shots—the kind that required a studio, and lights. So just before the forget-me-nots were set to burst into flower, DOC ranger Michael McCandless drove a single precious plant, grown from a cutting, over the winding hills north of Napier. Thomas met him at the best bakery in Wairoa, then drove the plant home to Gisborne.
There, it dutifully flowered for its portrait session. More than six months later it’s still at Thomas’s place—and doing just fine. “My little trooper,” he calls it.
These forget-me-nots are only found at one spot in the wild—a kilometre above sea level. Thomas intuits that his plant, too, “lusts for elevation”.
“But it seems quietly tolerant with three metres above sea level.”
More by Catherine Woulfe