A Blog by John Halkett

Tag: New Zealand

Coastal beauty a New Zealand Christmas celebration

The pōhutukawa is one of twelve Metrosideros species endemic to New Zealand and has an important place in New Zealand culture for its strength and beauty.

The pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa), is New Zealand’s most colourful flowering tree. Its canopy bursts into a sheet of brilliant crimson red (or occasionally orange, yellow or white) blossom in early summer, which earns it the alternative name of New Zealand Christmas Tree.

Pōhutukawa is a coastal evergreen tree in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae and it found on the Northern half of the New Zealand ‘s North Island, evergreen coastal forest… Read more “Coastal beauty a New Zealand Christmas celebration”

Akatarawa giant rātā – a secret New Zealand tree treasure

The now New Zealand piece of the once great southern continent Gondwanaland drafted south before the Australian eucalypts evolved, but did, and still does, host a eucalypt ancestor, the Metrosideros trees, including the pohutukawa, or New Zealand Christmas Tree, plus the Northern and Southern rātā trees. So, no eucalypts (or snakes) made it onto the New Zealand as Gondwanaland fragmented – all those millions of years ago.

Talking about rātā trees, hidden in the Akatarawa Forest, near New Zealand’s capital city of Wellington, is one of the country’s best kept tree secrets – reported as a living… Read more “Akatarawa giant rātā – a secret New Zealand tree treasure”

Antarctica forests

Just back from southern South America and Antarctica having a firsthand look at climate change impacts.
With a surface area in excess of 14 million square kilometres Antarctica is larger than Europe, and almost twice the size of Australia. As much as 98 per cent of the continent’s surface is covered in thick, compacted ice, reaching an average depth of over a two kilometres.
Recent scientific discoveries suggest that this ‘forgotten continent’ – sometimes nicknamed the Great White Desert – may in fact have once hosted forests.
Sarah Feakins, a biogeochemist from the University of Southern … Read more “Antarctica forests”

Big Victorian mountain ash tree in Nelson

Went to Nelson at the top end of New Zealand’s South Island recently to visit my brother Lawrie. While there we hunted out the locally well-known Barrington Gum.
It’s an Australian mountain ash (Eucalyptus regans) thought to have been planted on then open farm land about 1860. It is now embedded within a radiata pine plantation. The tree was officially measured in 2009 and at that time had a height of 72.1 metres and a diameter of 2.4 metres. The tree is listed in the New Zealand Tree Register at: www.notabletrees.org.nz.
The impressive mountain ash forests of the state of Victoria in Australia are… Read more “Big Victorian mountain ash tree in Nelson”

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