The Law In Flower

 The deceptively lovely bush lawyer in spring.

This gorgeous blossom belongs to an otherwise fearsome native plant.
It seems that lawyers in the nineteenth century were no less tenacious and rapacious than they are today, for the vernacular English name of this plant, (which has vicious little hooks on its stems and the backs of its leaves), is bush lawyer.

Its Maori name is tataramoa. I do not know how this translates, but as pre-colonial Maori society was free from lawyers, we can be sure that the English name is not a translation.

The scientific name is Rubus cissoides, indicating that this genus belongs to a  large family found in both hemispheres which includes blackberries, raspberries and other good-to-eat berries. The fruit of the bush lawyer do look like small blackberries, and they are edible, but they are very dry and seedy compared to a real blackberry.

Bush lawyer scrambles through a dead tree on the Purau/Port Levy saddle.

There are three other Rubus species endemic to New Zealand, all of them equally scratchy, and one of them leafless. Apart from growing them on boundary fences and hedges where you want to repel intruders (cheaper and much prettier than barbed wire), I can't think of a garden use for them, but at this time of year the wild ones do have an attractiveness which belies their mean streak.

The leafless lawyer, Rubus squarrosus.