Trees

I am impressed by the trees here in New Zealand.  The size, the variety, and the abundance of trees are all incredible. For this week’s blog, I thought I would share my top five favorite New Zealand trees from our travels so far.

Ponga (Silver Fern Tree)

Any discussion of New Zealand trees has to start with the Silver Fern (ponga, in Maori).  The ponga is pretty much the national symbol of New Zealand (although the kiwi is a close second).  It grows wild all over the country, so you see it everywhere you go.  You also see images of it all over the place.  The national sports teams incorporate it into their uniforms and many companies have logos that are based on the silver fern.  The tree trunks are used heavily in landscaping, so it’s hard to walk very far around here without tripping over one, literally and figuratively. 

Ponga tree at Whakarewarewa Thermal Village, outside of Rotorua

Some example logos with the Silver Fern

Tane Mahute (Lord of the Forest)

Tane Mahute is the largest Kauri tree in New Zealand at roughly 50 meters tall and 14 meters in girth.  We recently took my father to see this tree on his visit to New Zealand.  It’s about 3 hours north of Auckland in a dense forest of Kauri on the West Coast.  Some of the forests have been around for thousands of years.  Kauri are native to New Zealand and are protected now, but were once a very popular source of wood for construction and shipbuilding.  The gum of the tree was also used quite heavily for commercial purposes.  Nowadays, it’s mostly used for producing furniture and art, and it’s really a beautiful wood.

 

Ashlyn, Luke, and Larry are the tiny people at the bottom

Waka Taua Ngatokimatawhaorua (War Canoe)

I know that this post is all about trees, but waka is the Maori word for canoe and many of them are made out of enormous kauri trees.  One of the more impressive wakas is at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, where the Maori and British (Pakeha) signed the Treaty of Waitangi, effectively establishing the nation of New Zealand in 1840.  This particular waka is carved out of a single kauri tree and it’s massive: it’s 37 meters long and can carry 80 paddlers as well as an additional 55 passengers.  They launch it every year on Waitangi Day (February 6), a national holiday here.

 

I couldn't even fit the whole thing in the picture on panoramic mode

Moreton Bay Figs in Albert Park

Albert Park is a really nice park in the central business district of Auckland, at the edge of the Auckland University campus.  In addition to the beautiful fountains, flowers, and landscaping, there are lots of massive trees in the park, and the Moreton Bay Figs are particularly impressive.  Moreton Bay Figs are a type of banyan tree and are native to Australia.  The trunks are massive, gnarly, and they spread out in all directions.  They make for great tree climbing (as Luke and Sedona have discovered), and they provided the perfect canopy for the Auckland Lantern Festival during Chinese New Year's.  Like other banyan trees, they drop new root systems from their branches that take hold and form additional trunks, which is partly why they make for such great climbing structures.

The Oak Tree at Hobbiton

I talked about our trip to the Hobbiton movie set in a previous post, but I can’t help mentioning the oak tree at Hobbiton again.  When Peter Jackson scouted out locations for the Shire, he found the perfect spot on a farm outside of Matamata (a few hours South of Auckland).  The layout was great, except for one small detail.  Apparently, Tolkien wrote about a very large oak on the top of Bilbo Baggins hobbit hole, but there wasn’t an oak tree at this location.  So Jackson spent $11,000 to bring in a tree from another location during filming.  They chopped it down, cut it in pieces, and then bolted it bag together during filming.  The leaves had all fallen off in the process of moving it, so they attached ~250,000 artificial oak leaves by hand to make it look authentic.  They tore it down after they finished shooting the LOTR movies, but when they decided to use the same location for the Hobbit movies, they needed to recreate the tree.  So this time they built an entirely artificial oak tree that is now a permanent feature of the Hobbiton movie set.

Yep, that's a fake tree

Luke with one of the artificial oak leaves