Friday Fabulous Flower - Alpine edition

Before leaving the subalpine zone of New Zealand let's have one more nice flower.  January is the early summer here, and like all such high altitude summer plants.  They have a pretty impressive floral display for their brief season.  This particular flower is highly symmetrical and quite attractive in clumps.  Seen here growing in a gravely soil with a number of other plants ranging from some 600-1800 m, Gentianella bellidifolia. The flowers are about 1 cm in diameter when open.

More alpine.subalpine

Well, you're gonna get more NZ because it's the best stuff TPP has for posting. In general TPP found NZ a bit off-putting.  In many places it has been deforested to within an inch of its life; all those hills upon which sheep now graze were forested. And there are virtually no land mammals, and not even much insect life, so very unlike the tropical forests TPP loves so much.  However now and again they have a winner.  And so it is with the Kea, a largish, alpine/subalpine parrot and much like the Gray Jay in the USA's Rocky mtns, this bird is not even slightly shy.  They have a certain beguiling quality about them, maybe its the way they try to take the rearview mirrors off your car, or how they chortle to themselves in a language seemingly akin to minions.  So it was great to see a few of these birds, close up, and at home so to speak at the top of Arthur's pass parading around like they own the place, and they do.  After the hike down, it was time to have lunch and a drink at the Wobbly Kea Bar & Café.

Friday Fabulous Flower - pincushion plant

TPP has been on the road (left side) visiting New Zealand, doing some southern hemisphere avoidance of January weather in North America.  For that part of it the trip was highly successful.  Given that NZ plants are highly endemic, something like 80% of woody plants grow no where else, except of course for those brought to NZ by people who wanted to see a sycamore for some damned reason.  TPP shall expand a bit more on this topic and his plant bucket list as he catches you up.  In addition to being on go, a lot, dealing with iffy wifi was a nearly constant issue, and when you advertise "free wifi" you should actually make it easy to access, not nearly impossible.  
OK, well, we needs a NZ flower.  And what with all the non-natives, southern Magnolia was in bloom nearly everywhere, finding a nice native plant is not as easy as it sounds.  However TPP's travels included a trip on the tranzalpine RR over the southern alps with an overnight in Arthur's Pass.  Our B&B hostess decided that an old botanist would do better starting at the top, not the mountain top, but the top of Arthur's pass, and walking down to the so-called village, spending the rest of the time observing the biology.  TPP does not do mountain (tree, ladder, social) climbing, but the pass is subalpine and above the tree line.  Lots of nice alpine plants grow in the area, and all incorporated into a National Park.
If you have ever visited an alpine/subalpine zone, you have observed many so-called "moss" or "pincushion" plants.  These are all low-growing, small-leaved plants forming a dense mat.  As a result they all look rather similar vegetatively, but if in flower, they often give away the identity.  This is an very dense, quite firm pincushion plant with a few remaining flowers pushing to the surface.  Isn't that grand?  Fortunately the couple of remaining flowers helped with the ID, Donatia novae-zealandiae, in the Donatiaceae, its own family!  It is quite close to Sylidiaceae, another family you are probably unfamiliar with. In some places a species of sundew poked its leaves up through the crown of this very short shrub.