Ponga or Punga?? Otatara School Monday 18 March 2019
The learning about classroom plants continued with room 5 of Otatara School visiting the Community Nursery and Education Centre. Firstly we distinguished between Punga (a collective term used to include all tree ferns) and Ponga (the specific Maori name for the silver fern). The Ponga or silver fern doesn’t grow in Otatara but the wheki ponga does. The classroom came with lots of knowledge from their inquiries so far and they shared this with us. We then did a range of activities in the education centre starting with a game where we grouped ferns and talked about whether they are found naturally in Otatara - Wheki (hard treefern), Wheki Ponga (fibrous tree fern) and Katoke (soft treefern) are. Then we looked closely at the spores of fern leaves that Chris had collected from our NZ native bush and saw first hand that ferns do not have seeds, but have “spores”. We also learnt that different ferns have spores in different places, which is something that helps group ferns. Then it was off on a walk exploring the bush looking for ferns and wondering why they grow in certain places and not others. Our walk confirmed that ferns like shady sheltered places to grow. During our walk we also noticed many of the other classroom plants and had a very friendly piwakawaka follow us looking for the bugs we disturbed. We then talked about how difficult it is to age tree ferns (as opposed to tree ring counting) but that many tree ferns seen would be very old – the oldest can grow to 100 years old.
Great enthusiasm and lots of great questions made it a fun time. It is great to see the local school connecting with their local environment.
Bronwyn and Chris
Posted: 19 March 2019