LANDSCAPES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 73

seed was frequently contaminated with a range of accompanying weeds such as
thistles. On the Peninsula, it was not sown, but rather broadcast by hand directly
into the ashes of the bush fires. It would germinate in the autumn rains and by the
next season a reasonable coverage could be expected (Petrie, 1963).
With grass came animals, and the ability to export surplus food and fibre in
exchange for investment and consumer goods. Grass species were therefore a
foundational component in international flows of biota (Brooking and Pawson,
2011). The nature of these flows has received some attention in recent years. In
Crosby's (1986) view of an imperial world focused on a metropolitan centre, they
are explicitly part of the armoury, with European people and their pathogens, of
'ecological imperialism'. The species carried were entrained in the work of
naturalizing a particular type of order that in its clarity and on-the-ground
delineation represents a classical liberal landscape patterned through proprietorial
rights. More recently, it has been argued that a globalized world is more realistically
understood as constituted from countless local places, in which case distinctions
between centre and periphery blur (Lester, 2006; Pawson, 2008). A view of
landscapes as relational in this sense reveals more complex networks of flows and
more subtle ways in which processes of accumulation and landscape making have
occurred. From this perspective, Banks Peninsula assumes a quite different position
in what has been called the 'webs of empire' (Ballantyne, 2012).
Cocksfoot, Dactylis glomerata , was suited to the Peninsula. It grows well in shady
places, like forest margins, but also tolerates dry conditions, such as occur locally
in mid to late summer on what are free-draining soils. The earliest known paddocks
of cocksfoot are recorded in Pigeon Bay in the mid-1850s. It rapidly became a
popular crop in its own right, supplementing other forms of farm income, as the
seed found a ready market in bush burn districts around New Zealand. Peninsula
cocksfoot thereby provided the basis of the forest-to-grass transition in places like
Taranaki and Manawatu in the North Island and in the Catlins in the southeastern
part of the South Island. The trade represented more than the disposal of surplus.
Cocksfoot has a high degree of intra-species variability and the local strain - which
became known as 'Akaroa cocksfoot' - evolved relatively quickly. It was longer
lived and also provided better all-year-round growth than overseas strains. It
therefore became a distinctive commodity in its own right (Wood, 2008).
By the 1880s a substantial amount was being traded internationally (Figure 5.4).
Although there was a lot of annual variation, depending on the amount of seed
available, exports built up rapidly with the peak years being just before and after
the First World War. The bulk of the seed was destined for Britain and Australia,
but increasingly America became a good customer. The 'other' category in the
graph includes Germany and Ireland. The significance of cocksfoot can only be
understood in terms of how it was used in the repair of old pastures and the
extension of new ones. Nineteenth-century grass seed mixes could be quite
complex but by the 1880s had often converged around three plants: cocksfoot,
perennial ryegrass, and white clover. In this context, cocksfoot played a valued role,
its attributes balancing those of long-favoured ryegrass. It is a clumpy plant,