Temporary housing sites had been provided on Mount Eliot (the present-day site of Puke Ariki museum), and frustrations mounted as settlers were forced to squat in homes built of rushes and sedges through winter, amid flourishing numbers of rats, dwindling food supplies and rising unease over the prospects of a repeat raid by Waikato Maori.
The last of these was named in his honour, as were species of several other genera, including Acacia, Aizoon, Scirpus, Thryptomene and Zygophyllum.
In addition to the cultivated crops, the site is vegetated by various grasses in the farmland; cattails, Lyngbye's sedge, and bulrushes in the intertidal zone; and Red alder, willows and Black cottonwood, along with snowberry, salmonberry, and blackberries in the wooded areas.
The shallow waters of the lake contain scarce vegetation composed of 72 species of plants which have adapted to salty water, such as Parish's glasswort (Arthrocnemum subterminale), Sea Lavender (Limonium), rushes (Juncus), glasswort (Salicornia), Sarcocornia, bulrush (Scirpus) and seepweeds (Suaeda).
At the frontline of water surface was Typha domingensis, toward the shore were Scirpus tabemaemontanic Gmelin, Paspalum vaginatum Schwarz and Cladium chinense Nees; they were seen in line.
Prominent were freshwater fish (primarily bonytail, Gila elegans, and razorback sucker, Xyrauchen texanus), freshwater mussels (Anodonta dejecta), water birds (particularly American coot, Fulica americana), and marsh plants (cattail, Typha, tule, Scirpus, and reed, Phragmites).