NZ Day 15: Tiny Leaves

When Captain Kirk lands on an alien planet all plants and rocks look as if they were made from cardboard. In Stargate they film in a normal North American forest and add a color filter to simulate alieness. How pitiful, when very cool and slightly alien looking forests are only half a planet away.

Here in New Zealand the forests look like ours only at first glance, close up almost everything is different. Oftentimes the fern grow on a trunk like palms and the trees I have seen so far all have unnervingly small leaves. It seems as if evolution had taken some rather different design decisions around here. I bet there is a perfectly good reason for trees to have these tiny leaves since there are actually several varieties of trees and they all have tiny leaves. Regula even thinks one must be an oak since its leaves look like shrunken versions of oak leave. Maybe science fiction movie writers should come to a New Zealand for forest inspiration.