LANDSCAPES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 74

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FIGURE 5.4 Exports of grass seed from New Zealand, 1875-1924. This is a good
proxy for export of Banks Peninsula cocksfoot as only Lyttelton among New Zealand
ports exported significant quantities of grass seed.
Source: Brooking and Pawson (2011: 128).

between which the ryegrass could grow, and provides herbage earlier in the season.
Cocksfoot is also persistent whereas, in the 1880s, the so-called 'ryegrass contro-
versy' in Britain raised doubts about whether ryegrass had this quality (Wood,
2008).
Cocksfoot was harvested by gangs of men, women, children and animals, who
assembled each season in late summer on the wharves of Lyttelton. Figure 5.5,
another Jesse Buckland photograph, shows a gang at work in the mid-1920s. A
portable threshing machine has been set up on a flat site below a bush remnant;
winnowing is taking place alongside. The grassy slopes, from which the seed heads
have been cut by hand, stretch into the distance at the right. A woman fills and
sews sacks of seed, which are then loaded onto horses. A dog rests on sacks yet to
be collected. This is a scene posed for the photographer but its shows the sequence
of material tasks required to process cocksfoot in the fields. These are tasks of
landscaping, what Kenneth Olwig refers to as 'performing upon landscape', or
undertaking the work of landscape maintenance. Landscape in this sense is 'a woven
material created through the merging of body and senses that occurs in dwelling'
(Olwig, 2008: 83-84).
The photograph reveals little about the temporality of landscape (Ingold, 2000).
Paddocks intended for seed production were shut up between early spring and late
summer to enable the seed to mature, then re-opened for cows in the autumn,
when the grass began to produce new and palatable shoots. The annual harvest
took place between January and March, depending on the aspect and elevation of
the valley slopes. Seed spillage enabled the crop to extend between the clumps and
maintain the pasture. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Peninsula was