tree – kōwhai

This is the first year I can remember getting excited about the end of summer, and being happy to see rain in the forecast. Autumn means tree planting! We’ve had a dry few weeks but have finally been gifted a decent downpour, and – hopefully not too early – I’ve been out with the spade.

We have a nice tree lineup at the front now: ngaio, tītoki, the existing pigeonwood, and a mountain horopito. I’m just back from a West Coast trip where the horopito was a warm chromatic contrast to the evergreen bush. I usually try and plant Wellingtonian natives, but I’ve quietly forgotten the rule for this new favourite.

The bank we’ve named “Monkey’s Fernery” now has a prickly shield fern, a kiokio and a little prostrate hebe. I’ve also tucked in a northern rātā sapling amongst the bigger trees, which may not be my smartest idea if it shoots to the clouds. There are a fair few in the Orongorongo Valley that would loom large over our little house.

Just in front of our fenceline, two kaikōmako/bellbird trees and a pair of small kōwhai are now braving a relentlessly weedy spot on top of the rocky road reserve bank. Good luck to them. Let’s hope at least half of the new plantings survive their first winter.

I’m enjoying roaming around the garden and pointing the PlantNet app at things. One small shrub I liked had slim jagged leaves with a median stripe. I was also curious about the tall bushy-topped trees that tower over the left-hand side of the house. Today I found out that these two were actually the same species: lancewood/horoeka (pseudopanax crassifolius). They look so different! I learnt that having wild contrasts like this between juvenile and adult plants is called “heteroblasty“.

One theory goes that the long-extinct moa wasn’t fond of grazing on the spiky leaves, but once the tree was beyond moa height, it no longer had to defend itself. The mature trunk is branch-less and the leaves high up in the canopy are broad and without teeth.

We have a few similar but wider-leaved plants on our jungly bank that look like they could be a coastal five-finger/houpara (pseudopanax lessonii) instead, or a hybrid of the two. At least some of the lancewood seem to have self-seeded because they appear in a few peculiar spots: hiding under the big camellias, and lurking by the letterbox.

Tag: tree

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