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Muehlenbeckia australis, the large-leaved muehlenbeckia or pohuehue, is a much-branched & interlaced plant, though veins support it to grow.

Description
Pohuehue can grow up to 10 meters in height, it’s bark is grey, and its main stem is up to 10cm in diameters and other branchlets are terete, grooved, and slender. The leaves grow in stiff petioles up to 25mm; each mature blade has dark green colour above and paler colour below. Also, mature blades remain broad-ovate to oblong shape. However, in the juvenile period, the leaves are three-lobed or fiddle-shaped, and margins are curved, irregular, and its surface are hairless and smooth.

The plant is semi-deciduous, and the abiotic factors can control leaves loss, such as the level of exposure and geographic location. Besides, it is a kind of dioecious vine, in other words, male and female grow organs in different plants, but sometimes it produces bisexual flowers as well. The flowers are cream colour, and diameters are 4-5 cm, and they are clustered to grow, each cluster is up to about 15cm long x 10cm wide. After flowering, the plant produces juicy fruits, and the seeds inside are shiny, dark, and three-sided, which are about 3.5cmm long and covered by a white, fleshy sepal.

Geographic Distribution
Natural global range

An endemic flora to New Zealand.

New Zealand range  Pohuehue distributes in New Zealand from the ground to mountains on Three Kings Island, North & South Stewart, and Chatham Island. It also has distribution in the north-east group of Muttonbird Islands in Foveaux Strait, Northland, as well as kowhai bush, Kanuka habitat.

Habitat preferences
Muehlenbeckia australis can be found in forest edge, open shrubland, cliff faces, regenerating places, and well-lit areas with climbing support. Additionally, the plant commonly grows in forest canopies or climbing over trees to be a part of the green corridor. Moreover, Pohueheu prefers sunny habitat where their seeding germinates more quickly, and in the juveniles stage, the plants could be tolerant to shade or semi-shade environment.

Life cycle/Phenology
Pohuehue’s seeds are coved by dry perianths, and they will be dispersed by simply falling. The seeds of Muehlenbeckia australis have dormancy, seeds’ germination is quite low under both light and dark environment at 20ºC, however, the seed sometimes starts germinating during the lower temperature condition. The reason is that pohuehue needs a period of chilling to activate germination. Also, pohuehue’ seed has low viability, even its seeds have appropriate moisture to support Besides, in pohuehue growing period, they often act as a ground cover, the veins always search for support to climb, and Burrow researched pohuehue’s germination feature (1996). According to the observation data, Pohuehue’s seeds germinated mainly in spring, summer and autumn, and the germination rate reach the peak in early spring. However, there are few germinations happened in the winter due to micro-climate difference, and in early autumn and late summer, the seed germinates slowly. Also, pohuehue usually needs 140-190 days to complete germination

Plants’ seed number could be determined by the number of ovules per ovary, but the competition of maternal or pollen source could result in abortion. For the leaf longevity, it mainly depends on the rate of leaf turnover, with the withering of old leaves and emergence of new leaves, and the canopy will keep still stable when the loss rate equals the growth rate. Pohuehue will flower and produce the fruit from November to April, but sometimes they still will be available in June. However, each pohuehue’s fruiting time varies, even in the same place.

Soil conditon preference
Pohuehue prefers well-drained soil under the sun or semi-shade environment, also, low PH soil with Mg is highly required for the Polygonaceae species growing, including Pohuehue. In addition, the lowest temperature that pohuehue can tolerate is -5 °c to -10 °c.

Predators/Parasites
The TERRAIN (2017) introduced the predators of pohuehue.

Pohuehue is extremely valuable for the invertebrates, it is as a host plant with many native insects depending on it. For instance, there are stick insects, files, bugs, and beetles feed on pohuehue, especially for moths and butterflies, it is the most popular food resources for them.

Three of copper butterflies feed on pohuehue. For the larvae that would feed on the plant are Lycaena edna, L. salustius, L. feredayi, L. enysil, and L. rauparaha. Also, there are at least ten undescribed species of copper are potentially feed on pohuehue.

Four types of the noctuid moth are large and attractive including Bitlya defigurata, B. Sericea, Meterana coeleno, and M. stipata. For other moth species, like geometrid moths, they also depend on pohuehue, including Declana floccosa, D. leptomera, Gellonia dejectaria, and Homodotis megaspilata. However, most geometrid moths are on this host plant. Moreover, Morova subfasciata is a kind of thyridid moth; its larva will be swelling on the stem and eat plant’ tissue, and Liothula omnivore usually feed on pohuehue’s leaves as well.

Other leafrollers in family Totricidae like Harmologa amplexana, Planotortrix excessana, Catamacta gavisana, and Ctenopseustis obliquana can also be found in this host plants. Also, Puccinia otagensis is a species of rust, it parasitise on the poheuhue but does not kill the host. Puccinia otagensis has a complicated life cycle, and it is specialised at parasitising on Polygonaceae species.

New Zealand indigenous birds like bellbird, tui, silvereye, blackbird, and song thrush also eat pohuehue’s fruit in fruit season. Fruits are about 3.1~4.4mm in diameter, which is easy to swallow for small-size bird.

Plants Community with Pohueheu is also a habitat of gecko species like jewelled gecko, they usually eat pohuehue’s sweet sepals.

Possums like The common brushtail possum feed on pohuehue’s fruits with seeds as well, and in their faeces, about 12% seeds would be fragmented, which means it is hard to increase pohuehue number through possum’s excrement.

Pohuehue’s vines growing feature
Dawson introduced pohuehue’ vines growthing detail (1986).

When a juvenile pohuehue starts growing, it will try to climb a great support, (like other branches) otherwise, it is easily to be bended to the ground. This is because a pohuehue is unlike other twins, their erect stems rotate in either direction, and they could change the way to climb under any random circumstance. The supports are often slender, and they could be deformed when the plant spreaders within the coils of vines. Also, the pohuehue could die, which might be caused by the vine’ inappropriate growth. Pohuehue can grow to 30m above the land surface or reach higher crown by climbing up small trees. ‘Firm cane-like searcher shoot’ could describe the any part of the stem’ growth and formation character in autumn, The stems will grow erectly after coiling on the forest ground, and the plant will rotate after the first-metre coiling. In addition, they grow on the other trees’ crown occasionally, and the stem can extend horizontally from one tree to another, which makes pohuehue widespread by trees canopies.