#2370 - Dacrycarpus dacrydioides
- Kahikatea
A tree that was growing on the side road next to the Mill House. It happened to be festooned with an AMAZING display of Beard Lichen.
Anyway -
AKA White pine, katea, kaikatea, koroī, kōaka, kahika, and kāī (for the young tree). First described botanically by the French botanist Achille Richard in 1832 as Podocarpus dacrydioides. Dacrycarpus means 'tear shaped fruit', and dacrydioides refers to its similarity to the related podocarp Dacrydium.
Adult trees have dull green overlapping scale leaves while juvenile have needle-like leaves, often with a bronze hue.
New Zealand's tallest tree, up to 65m in height. Formerly dominant in damp fertile areas on both islands, where it grew in spectacular stands including in swamps. Unfortunately 'damp and fertile' is also prime dairy country, and the timber was used for Māori watercraft and tools, and by Europeans for wood pulp, barrels, and butterboxes, being white and odorless. Populations in most of the country have been decimated as a result.
In Māori mythology kahikatea is a child of Tāne, the god of forests and birds, and Hine-wao-riki, and was an important source of wood timber, tattoo dye, chewing gum, and berries for food. The Māori sometimes had to climb more than 30 m to reach the latter. A decoction or steam bath of the leaves was used as a cure for internal complaints.
A Kahikatea tree can produce 800kg of seed a year. The seeds have fleshy attachments called receptacles which encourage birds such as kererū and tūī to eat and disperse them. The trees also support a spectacular range of epiphytes - 100 different species have been recorded on a single tree.
Threats to the trees, beyond land-clearing and logging, include drought, invasive willows which occupy their preferred habitat after disturbance, and seed predation by introduced rats and mice. New Zealand had neither until the arrival of humans.
Pohokura, North Island, New Zealand
