Tag: pohutukawa

Wellington’s Christmas tree

We all know and love Welling­ton’s Pohutukawa trees. Espe­cial­ly at this time of year when they come into their own, their fiery blos­som earn­ing them the title of “New Zealand’s Christ­mas Tree”.

What’s less well known is that they can’t real­ly be con­sid­ered the “Christ­mas Tree” of any area of New Zealand out­side the top half of the North Island, their native range.

Instead, we should con­sid­er the Rata, North­ern and South­ern, for this role. Between them, they grow over all of the North Island and most low­land areas of the South Island.

Once whole forests of Rata blos­somed in Welling­ton at Christ­mas. But no longer: the set­tlers’ fires, and lat­ter­ly, the Pos­sum, have caused an almost total decline in their pop­u­la­tion. Still, here and there rem­nants are to be found with­in the bounds of Welling­ton itself.

A par­tic­u­lar­ly fine spec­i­men is at this moment flow­er­ing in the Otari-Wilton’s Bush. Usu­al­ly it can’t be dis­tin­guished from any oth­er tree at a dis­tance, but right now its splen­dour dec­o­rates the bushy hill­side, con­trast­ing strong­ly with the qui­et greens of the sur­round­ing trees.

Plant­i­ng any more Pohutukawa here is not a good idea, as the Welling­ton Botan­i­cal Soci­ety will tell you. (One must pre­sume there were good rea­sons why the Coun­cil chose Pohutukawa over Rata for their Green­ing the Quays project.)