“That,” said Kate solemnly, “is a pinkula.” It was sometime in the early 1990s, and my friend Kate and I were walking along the Burke-Gilman Trail in Seattle. Knowing she has a green thumb, I’d pestered Kate to identify a flower along the path. And then a plant. And another flower. For some reason, she didn’t think this game was as much fun as I did. Possibly because she knew I was going to forget one name as soon as she said the next one. Now, however, we’d come across a small pink flower whose name would become infamous in our friendship vocabulary. Because, you see, it seems that every flower and plant on the rest of the walk was a pinkula. Even the blue ones! Now, whenever I don’t know what a plant is really called, which is most of the time, it is officially dubbed a pinkula. Until now…
An Ent
The first hint that New Zealand was a land without pinkulas was my first week here, when Chuck took me to Albert Park. It was a month or so after I got my leg cast off, so I was groaning and complaining as we climbed a steep path to the hilltop park. At the top, my breath was taken away once more. By the Ents. Yes, Lord of the Rings fanatics, the Ents live in Auckland. Not the ones in the movie, admittedly. (Those probably live at Weta Workshops in Wellington.) But these beautiful buttress roots sure look like they’re ready to rise from the ground and go for a deliberative walk. And their twisty, perfect-climbing-tree limbs seem ready to reach out for an errant hobbit wandering by.
Thus began my plant obsession. It took me 14 months to finally figure out what these majestic giants were. When my dad visited, he insisted that their leaves looked like figs. We tried to find labels for them in botanical gardens and parks. But I finally found the answer closer to home – I looked up Albert Park on the Internet. Yep, Dad, they’re Moreton Bay figs (Ficus macrophylla) from Queensland, Australia.
Tree Fern
The irony is that New Zealand doesn’t really need to import fancy fantastic plants from their trans-Tasman cousins. This is home to a crazy diversity of unique trees, ferns and flowering plants. When you tramp through the bush, dwarfed by gigantic ferns and Dr. Seussian trees, you sense why British naturalist David Bellamy called them Dinosaur Forests. No wonder Peter Jackson filmed King Kong here! When Aotearoa split from the ancient continent of Gondwana, it took Jurassic era trees, birds and lizards with it. (Mammals weren’t widespread yet, so the only native mammal here is a bat.) New Zealand’s geographic isolation meant 80% of the greenery here is found nowhere else in the world.
Harakeke flower stalks
When the Māori arrived between 800-1000 years ago, they found a rainy land covered in greenery. Understandably, the Māori honored the trees and plants from which they clothed themselves, built homes, carved waka (canoes), and healed themselves. Without the leafy harakeke with which they made into clothing, they would have been some very cold Polynesians indeed! Low-slung houses were made from trunks of the towering tree ferns, while various trees from the hardwood-podocarp forests were useful for waka and carvings of gods and ancestors.
Kauri trees
This veneration extended to naming and sanctifying ancient trees. One of the most important Māori deities is Tāne Mahuta, god of forests and birds. In Māori cosmology, Tāne Mahuta is the child of Ranginui (sky father) and Papatuanuku (earth mother). To bring light into the world, he broke the primordial embrace of his parents thus allowing life to flourish. His powerful name has also been given to a 1250-year old kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest in the north. This “Lord of the Forest” is the largest of its kind living, at 51.5m high and 13.8m around. Another kauri in the same forest, Te Matua Ngahere or “Father of the Forest”, is believed to be the oldest kauri on earth at 2000 years old.
Taketakerau is the name of a giant puriri tree outside Opotiki on the Bay of Plenty. This 2000-year old tree was used by the Upokorehe hapu (subtribe) as a sacred storage place for the bones of their venerated dead. This sacred site meant death to any unwelcomed visitors, although I wonder whether by the atua (ancestral gods) or at the hands of the hapu? When the tree was damaged by a storm, the tapu (sacred status) was removed and it can now be visited by non-Māori without breaking any ritual prohibitions.
Pōhutukawa tree
Perhaps the most famous sacred tree is Te Aroha. Located at the very top of New Zealand at Cape Reinga, this pōhutukawa tree is where Māori believe dead spirits fly to after they die. They climb down the 800-year old roots of Te Aroha and continue their journey on to Hawaiki – which refers both to the afterlife and the Māori homeland.
Trees still have symbolic significance to both Māori and Pākeha in modern times. One Tree Hill is one of the most visible high spots in Auckland. Formerly home to a Māori fortified village pa and then an early European pioneer’s farm, the volcanic cone is important to both communities. Its Māori name Maungakiekie refers to the kiekie vine and another name for it describes a solitary tōtara tree.
Toetoe grass
But there’s no tree on One Tree Hill. The native tree was chopped down by a white settler in 1853. It was replaced with a non-indigenous Monterey pine, which was attacked by Māori activists in 1994 and again in 1999. It had to be cut down in 2000, after a severe storm damaged it irreparably. Nobody can decide what kind of tree to plant in its place. Should it be a native tree or a European one? This has been complicated by a Treaty of Waitangi claim on the land by several native Māori tribes. Only a few weeks ago, the decision was made to transfer ownership of this and 10 other Auckland volcanic cones to local Māori iwi. We may get a tree yet.
Native silver beech
European settlers didn’t just cut down the one tree. They cleared thousands of acres of them. From the mid-19th century onwards, New Zealand’s forests were felled to build houses and ships, thereby making way for the agricultural and livestock industries that still dominate the economy. There’s a reason large swaths of New Zealand remind visitors of the rolling hills England or gorse-covered Scotland. It makes me wonder what kind of spiritual effect the bush-clearing must have had on the Māori – as the visible manifestation of Tāne Mahuta fell at the hands of the same peoples who brought Jesus to replace him in their minds.
Kowhai flowers
Perhaps it was the Kiwi love of being outdoors that finally led locals to understand that endemic plants and wildlife were dying out. Native bush reserves now exist all around the country and efforts are being made to slow the impact of invasive species on local plants and animals. One-third of the country is owned by the state – and now also by Māori iwi – as parks or reserves. The most popular tourist activities these days involve admiring the unique birdlife, plant life and geology of the country. Interestingly, this development is happening at the same time that New Zealanders are trying to find a unique, multi-ethnic identity, as they distance themselves from their imperial past. Amazing endemics like kauri, pōhutukawa, harakeke and kowhai have become New Zealand icons.
The most iconic of New Zealand plants is the towering silver fern called ponga. For weeks, I saw silver fern images on rugby uniforms, souvenirs, flags and logos. In fact, this overabundance of Kiwi symbols really got up my nostrils for a few months. It seemed like a team of marketers and tour operators had taken over the country, turning it into one big advertisement and draining these symbols of their power.
A koru (Furled fern frond)
I even misunderstood what the silver fern was. Someone had told me that Māori used them for way-finding at night. I saw a dried-out, graying fern leaf on the forest floor on a short bush walk and concluded the silver ferns were dead leaves laid out to point the way. This weird idea ended the first time someone flipped over a living ponga leaf. Ooohhhh! Shiny green leaf flipped to reveal a fantastic silvery underside. There’s something almost magical in seeing this the first time. I understood that what makes good marketing to foreigners also grasps at a very elemental connection Kiwis have with their land.
This reverence is nowhere stronger than with the awesome kauri trees. These are like the redwood forests of New Zealand. And they are similarly rare and cherished. Thousands of people now go to the forests of Northland to visit Tāne Mahuta and his relatives. For non-Māori, this is a recent development, however. While Māori saw these giant trees as rulers of the forest, Europeans saw the strong, straight trunks as ideal ships’ masts.
The kauri’s resinous gum was also a major industry. It was chipped from trees and branches, as well as dug from the ground, to make varnishes and linoleum. In fact, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand notes that Auckland was largely built on the gum industry. My Croatian friends out there will be interested to know that many of these hard-working gumdiggers were Dalmatians.
800-year old kauri
With less than seven-percent of these forests still standing, cutting kauri trees has now become illegal. You will still find many woodcrafters turning out lovely kauri-wood bowls, however. This is legal, as they are using ancient kauri wood. In the peat swamps of Northland lie submerged kauri trees that fell due to natural cataclysmic storms over the years. Some of the wood is carbon-dated at 45,000 years old.
It isn’t just the majestic kauri and gigantic ferns that have turned me into Plant Girl. New Zealand is a gardener’s paradise. Botanical gardens exist in most major cities. Christchurch is called the Garden City of New Zealand for its famous botanical collections and annual Festival of Flowers. Walking through its gardens with my mom was like visiting the greenhouses of my youth, where my brother and I combated boredom by poking the Sensitive Plant and playing with gift shop toys. But this time, I liked it. And I realized how many plants I recognized from those trips and from my dad’s gardening habit.
Bird of paradise
I simply can’t get over the profusion of flowers that are blooming year round. Non-native species give the endemic breeds a run for their money here. The hibiscus plant outside our door has blooms on it year-round. The bird of paradise, that my dad coaxed to bloom as a potted plant in our New Mexico greenhouse, grows in bushes that are taller than I am. Calla lilies grow wild in the backyard. Plants that are shrubs elsewhere become trees here. It’s as Dad and Sandy said when the visited, “Everything is bigger in New Zealand!”
Pōhutukawa flowers
I have never seen so many red flowering trees in my life. The first to catch my eye were the appropriately-named red Australian immigrants: the flame tree and the bottlebrush. But December brought the native reds out. The pōhutukawa trees, that seem to edge every beach in the country, exploded in a profusion or red puffballs. Hence, their English nickname of the New Zealand Christmas Tree. The 600-year old volcano in the bay from Auckland, Rangitoto, looks orange from the simultaneous blooming of every pōhutukawa on the island.
Pōhuts, as my Kiwi friend Annette calls them, might be my favorite tree. These hardy trees love the volcanic soil of the North Island. You can find them hanging out over salt water, checking out the view and making your photographs more colorful. And some of them have flying roots that they send down from their branches. The huge root bundles of a tree near our library had me weirded out for awhile, until I figured out what they were for and that they were being trimmed to keep them from rooting. The northern rata, a pōhut cousin, germinates in the crowns of mature trees and send their roots down around the trunks to the ground. Eventually, they strangle the host tree and take its place. I know it’s kinda rude, but it’s also pretty damned cool.
Cabbage trees
And I haven’t even told you about the Truffula Trees. They’re called Cabbage Trees – or tī rakau if you’re Māori – but I know the Lorax is lurking around the stand of them in my backyard. You’ll just have to look at my photos to see that I’m right. Don’t miss the pictures of the hedgehog tree down the street! Somebody has got to tell me what that thing is. Or else, I’m claiming it’s where the adorable spiny mammals come from.
So, I’m not finding nearly as many pinkulas around as I used to. I drag Chuck to botanical gardens and get irritated when they don’t label things. But how can I resist? After all, a walk in the woods is more interesting when you’re tramping through Jurassic Park.
Visit my endemic green friends at: NZ – Native plants by jocuteca.
And lovely newcomers at: NZ – Non-native plants by jocuteca.
Kiwi Crazy 