photo taken by Bmdavll
You found a cafe’ where you get access to a modest library, and came across ‘The Natural History of Canterbury’ published by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand and edited by A.W.Reed in 1969..
No, not Canterbury the English town, but the New Zealand region where Christchurch, the garden city, is located, east of the south island.
You jumped straight to the botany section, where in the preamble the author quotes a certain J.B.Armstrong who in 1880 writes:
No account, howerver short, of the plants of Canterbury would be complete without some reference to those plants which have been introduced through the agency of colonisation. Wherever settlemnt extends the native plants rapidly die out, and their places are filled by British and other exotic plants, mostly of a weedy nature […] There can, I think, be no doubt whether that the native vegetation will eventually be almmost, if not entirely exterminated, and the floral feautures of the country althogether changed through the introduction of these foreign weeds.
