I still remember the first time I went off track in the bush. I was excited. As a kid I had spent large amounts of time exploring the bush with my brothers when on holiday, but we never strayed too far from our campsite, not wanting to get lost and becoming victims of our over-active imaginations. But this time it was different, it felt somehow official. We were venturing in deep and had a mission for doing so. But my elation in bush bashing lasted only for five, perhaps ten minutes. We were bashing through the bush, but the bush was bashing back, and it felt like it was winning. If you didn’t look at your feet you stumbled over tree roots, but if you looked at your feet tree branches would whip your face. I also met bush lawyer, and made an instant enemy, becoming entangled in its grasping vines. Bush lawyer is covered in backward facing hooks, so once it snares you it is hard to get off (a useful tip: the best way to pull it off is by pulling the vine towards you, rather than your immediate reaction to pull it away from you). This plant was named bush lawyer because ‘once it digs its thorns into you it will not let go until it has drawn blood’. The bush also had an uncanny ability to soak us through even if it had stopped raining the night before and turned out to be a perfectly sunny day.

We endured all this bother simply because New Zealand’s bush is dense, especially the undergrowth. We may at times curse it, but undergrowth constitutes an important part of the bush’s ecosystem. A typical New Zealand bush has five layers: forest floor, undergrowth, sub-canopy, canopy and emergent layer.

The forest floor is typically a damp place, where mosses, ferns and fungi thrive. Multitudes of animals live in this layer, including weta, giant land snails and velvet worms. Many New Zealand birds, and the short-tailed bat, also spend a lot of time on the forest floor, hunting insects.

The undergrowth consists of taller ferns, young trees and shrubs, such as kawakawa. In undisturbed native bush this layer is very thick with plants, making it hard to walk through easily. The plants in this layer are no taller than about five meters.

The sub-canopy is typically made up of tree ferns, nikau palms and small trees such as mahoe, makomako and horopito. The plants in this layer normally grow to around ten meters in height.

The canopy is the roof of the bush. The trees in this layer form a dense foliage that filters both rain and sunlight for the layers below. They typically grow to around twenty meters tall. Trees in this layer include tawa, beech and cabbage trees.

The emergent layer are the trees that grow even taller, often over thirty meters, and tower over the bush. These trees are more spread out and do not form a canopy. Emergent trees include rimu, totara and matai.

While an area of bush is an ecosystem of its own, within are incorporated smaller ecosystems within the vertical layers of the bush.

After three months bush-bashing almost everyday, I found I have adapted to moving through the bush with as much ease as is possible and don’t curse quite so often. But lets face it, in New Zealand’s bush tripping every now and then is inevitable, as is coming out covered in scratches. When the frustration kicks in just try to remember that dense undergrowth is an important part of the bush’s ecosystem. But probably more helpful is simply to pause, take a deep breath and except your situation (the latter suggestion does work, trust me, I’ve been there).