Love affair, with puriri

Page last updated on 8 November 1998

Hugging the wonderful four stemmed puriri tree in Smith's Bush, North Shore.

No self respecting scientist should be willing to admit this, but I have a love affair with puriri trees.

Puriri trees have the same perverse sense of humour as I do. They can fruit and flower any time or all year round, none of this seasonal stuff. The fruit is of moderate food value for birds. Rather like the bread in your larder, it is not particularly interesting or nutritious, but it is always there. The flowers are a rich nectar source for the many nectar feeding birds, and again available most of the year.

Puriri's are incredibly tenacious, if one falls over it will just sprout new roots and branches. I've seen trees that cover large tracts of forest in this way after regrouping four or five times. It is one of the few native trees that can survive fire and cattle browsed stumps can still be alive through root-grafting with a neighbouring tree. A hard tree to kill.

The puriri that most people have seen are the gnarled and twisted remnants of puriri forests. They are great to climb in and make tree houses, but they do not resemble the puriri of pre-logging days. A report from 1840 describes puriri as a great timber species. Trees were often two metres plus in diameter and grew straight, without branching, for ten metres or more.

All the straight trees have been logged for the hardy and durable timber. The grain of gnarly trees sometimes defeats even modern technology, and proved impossible for the old-time loggers, so those trees were left standing. The Waimate North puriri is old (possibly 2000 years) but gnarly, I've seen straighter and taller trees.

The current record holder for puriri with largest diameter (2.7m) can be found in puriri rich Waimate North.

Puriri trees grow best on rich soils. Farmers cottoned on to this quite early in the settlement of New Zealand and many puriri forests were felled to make way for pastures and agricultural land.

Back to h!ighl!ghts index page or visit my PhD project page called Operation fruit, my personal homepage, or the species list for my PhD, and find out where these species live on the distribution map, or maybe you would like an explanation of scientific names.