Botanic Man’s love affair with NZ
‘‘Old Man’s Beard must go!’’ You might remember that enthusiastic declaration delivered to our television screens by ebullient English botanist Dr David Bellamy in the late 1980s in an attempt to eradicate that noxious weed.
Old Man’s Beard (Clematis vitalba) was a nasty, ‘‘howable’’ plant smothering and killing New Zealand’s native bush. A ‘‘catastrophe’’, he cried while ensconced in the choking weed.
Frequently popping out of the bushes to deliver his conservationist message with his unmistakable inability to pronounce the letter ‘‘r’’, Bellamy came to prominence in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s with his natural history shows.
Bellamy, who died on December 11, aged 86, traced his love of New Zealand back to when he was a boy. He was given a stamp with New Zealand’s biggest kauri tree, Ta¯ne Mahuta, on it and always wanted to come and see it for himself. He visited Aotearoa more than 45 times to make his television programmes and support conservation endeavours. And to behold the magnificent Ta¯ne Mahuta.
The conservationist, botanist, academic, author and educationist never shied away from controversy during his visits here, not if it meant the protection of
the environment. He wasn’t called the ‘‘Botanic Man’’ for nothing. He would stand at the barricades and fight for what he believed in.
During the making of Moa’s Arc, a landmark documentary series telling the history of our country’s unique evolutionary past, he became involved in a campaign to save the Whirinaki Forest from loggers. He believed New Zealand’s forests were as important as the finest buildings in Europe. Our world heritage was
based on nature, not culture, he once said.
The East Londoner, who wrote more than 40 books, including Jolly Green Giant, hosted a steady stream of wildlife documentaries, travelling the world in the course of his conservation work.
Bellamy, a father of five who was married to Rosemary Froy, said in 2003 that he had planned his funeral. A woodland burial, of course. A fitting resting place for the Jolly Green Giant.