Pohutukawa: The New Zealand Christmas Tree
December 17, 2007
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

Down Under, Christmas is very different from what I was used to when I was a child in small town British Columbia. There we longed for a snowfall to give a soft landing for Santa's sleigh, snow to give extra magic to the long awaited day and a lovely background to the Christmas story. Here in New Zealand, we hope for a great day for swimming.

Seeing an enormous plastic Santa Claus atop the local New World supermarket entry sign always gives me a sickening jolt. He doesn't belong there. He looks so hot and ridiculous in his fur-trimmed red suit. He is out of place south of the equator. Mind you, I cannot bear him anywhere but in my imagination. The frantic, grasping gimme gimme gimme aspect of Christmas is not for me.

A sprawling Pohutukawa: New Zealand's Christmas tree.

Because it blooms so spectacularly dark crimson before Christmas and sometimes lasts throughout the holiday season, the pohutukawa is called the 'New Zealand Christmas Tree'. We all hope that the pohutukawa will still be showing its crimson pompoms along the water's edge to provide a spectacular setting for Kiwi Xmas picnics, BBQs, and camping holidays as well as a festive backdrop to anchorages.

Collecting Christmas blooms.

The pohutukawa, our New Zealand Christmas Tree (metrosideros excelsa) is a coastal tree of the northern half of North Island, New Zealand that does not object to having its roots in salt water. This spectacular tree can grow to a great age (several hundred years old) and become huge (occasionally as much as seventy feet high with a trunk up to six feet in diameter). Its long tortuous limbs often overhang the water at high tide. Sometimes sinuous brown roots sprout from these boughs.

Close-up of bloom.

The pohutukawa's craggy bark and complicated nooks and crannies make fertile homes for ferns and mosses. Some old pohutukawa are draped with lichens that look almost like ghostly grey tattered lace curtains. Heavy epiphytes growing on branches may eventually bring these tree giants to their knees or at least make them rest on beaches on their elbows for support.

Lichens look like ghostly tattered grey curtains.

With very little imagination you can see human and animal forms in the gnarled trunks and limbs - fists, shoulders, haunches, biceps, thighs, faces, paws, toes. The writhing, snaking complications of pohutukawa roots when bared by coastal erosion make fascinating studies. Some artists specialize in depicting this fanciful aspect of the trees. But it is the pohutukawa's spectacular Christmastime crimson display that draws attention to all of the above, and incidentally - attracts bees. Blooming pohutukawa trees are always a-buzz with bees after nectar.

Epiphytes.

Colonies of cormorants (called shags here) often nest in the pohutukawa overhanging their feeding grounds. The persistent demands of hungry babies - and the guttural scolding of adults - amuse us on our quiet morning rows. Beneath their stick nests, droppings ice the leaves and branches in white guano, eventually all but killing the trees before the birds ever so gradually move on to neighboring trees with leafier roosts and less encumbered nesting sites.

The curves and convolutions of pohutukawa branches made superb natural boat knees sought after by early shipwrights. Also called 'ironbark', its hard, non-rotting wood was prized. Even toredo worms left it alone.

Pohutukawa in the Bay of Islands. (photo courtesy of Moira Wood)