The first blogpost on the monkey puzzle tree in New Zealand finished with a view of a good specimen in Queen Mary Hospital, Hanmer. It was planted about 1930, very likely as part of Alfred Buxton’s commissioned work at this site. Given that Buxton & Company planted quite a few monkey puzzles in their highly…
One of Wellington’s very few monkey puzzle trees. Source: Author, August 2026 Stories of trees falling in and out of fashion are common. Beamish,1 for example, has written on the ‘rise and fall of the Lombardy poplar’, a tree frequently seen in New Zealand landscapes. But perhaps the tree that most readily comes to mind…
Here are six examples of cenotaphs, obelisks, or similar World War One memorial structures that all have phoenix palms beside them: Source: Postcard of a war memorial, Akaroa. Ron Scarlett Collection, Canterbury Museum. Source: Papakura-Karaka memorial, 2024, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 3003-0719 Source: Author, Pakaraka war memorial, July 4, 2023 Source: Author, Napier Memorial Square,…
In 1904 when monkey puzzle trees were still a considerable botanical curiosity,1 an article in the Ashburton Guardian on the local Beautifying Society records that ‘Mr James Porter, of Allenton, had presented the association with two monkey puzzle trees, which would be planted in Baring Square. It was decided to thank Mr Porter, and to…
Robert Percy Moore is regarded as New Zealand’s greatest panoramic photographer.1 Particularly during the 1920s, Moore’s photos included many large urban houses of the upper class and rural homesteads of wealthy runholders. Here is an example of the former: Source: Smith, George John, 1862-1946. Riverlaw, a very large three-storeyed house in Aynsley Terrace, St Martins,…
The three palms showcased here have both a botanical label and further information on them provided nearby. The ‘backstory’ relates to the nature of such information, and an entry into such matters is provided by the following photos captured in a recent visit to Corsair Bay, Banks Peninsula: Source: Author, May 2026 This is very…
Recently I was catching a bus home from the central city and partly because leaves had begun falling from deciduous trees (it is autumn here), I noticed a large tree I had previously assumed to be singular was actually three trees. I don’t think I’d ever paid the ‘singular’ tree much attention, perhaps because it…
Source: ‘Wellington from the air, 1930’, F. Douglas Mill Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections FDM-0570-G The photo above shows part of the Miramar Peninsula, Wellington. If you fly into Wellington when a southerly is blowing, you’ll be just above the strip of water with the land to your left. Struthers1 reports that the name ‘Miramar’…
If you fly into Wellington and drive into town from the airport, the first significant trees you come across are in the Mt Victoria town belt. The planting of conifers in this large public reserve began in the early 1880s, and radiata pines and macrocarpa still predominate. Some of these old conifers featured in the…
In the first two posts of this set we saw two things. First, in New Zealand from 1859 on, a tradition was established of commemorative tree-planting that marked events associated with British royalty. These events could have been an actual visit to New Zealand by members of royalty, or something that happened back in Britain…
As is well known the city of Christchurch suffered two major earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. Many of the older buildings in the central city area were subsequently removed, and it is only 15 years later that the rebuild seems almost complete. A popular option for tourists in Christchurch is a tram trip through the…
This Libocedrus plumosa (kawaka) hasn’t grown much since it was planted in May 2023 in Lower Hutt’s Anzac Lawn to mark the coronation of King Charles. Hopefully it will flourish, and if it does the current plaque will presumably be moved to the base of the tree, as is common practice. It is a New…
On 6 May 2023 when King Charles III was crowned, New Zealand was still not a republic, consequently it was understandable that much was done to mark the coronation. The then Prime Minister (Chris Hipkins) and Governor General (Cindy Kiro) travelled to London to attend the coronation ceremonies, but about two weeks prior Chris Hipkins…
In part 1 of this post I took some poetic license with ‘better by the dozen’, but we can start here with a case where there are literally a dozen palms under consideration. Consider this extract from an article in the Wanganui Herald: Mr Heinold1 lived at 3 Blythe Street, which is near the top…
Without much by way of intentional planning, we’ve been getting through the main palms that featured in early New Zealand gardens. Strangely though, I’ve left out the Mexican fan palm, even though it has at times been right before my eyes. For example, consider one of the ‘Arrowsmith photos’ first presented in The Arrowsmith Phoenix…
There have been several posts in this blog on various aspects of the Phoenix palm. The number of these is partly because I spent at least a year, from about 2023, researching the spread of the palm in New Zealand. The posts herein have been kept relatively short, but readers who are still interested can…
In previous posts I’ve commented that Wellington (where I live) is not a well-treed city. But only 30 kilometres away in Upper Hutt, things look different, at least on the surface. We saw in the previous post (‘Hardly extraordinary …’) that in 1992 a lot of effort went into transplanting16 Chinese fan palms in Upper…
In the last post we learnt that in1865 Sir George Grey sent nikau palms to Ferdinand von Mueller – the Australian government botanist – who then distributed them about the globe. This obviously suited both men: von Mueller furthered his plant exchanges, and as an ‘amateur botanist’ Grey must have felt he was making a…
As I noted in the first post on the Arrowsmith Phoenix palms, a worldwide ‘palm craze’ spread among garden enthusiasts from the 1850s on.1 British migrants brought this with them to the colonies where they settled, including New Zealand. At times this led to an appreciation of the nikau (Rhopalostylis sapida), but relative to the…
Trees have been used as memorials for centuries. It is no surprise then that with the end of both 20th century world wars service people were commemorated by the planting of trees, either singly or in groups. The latter were often planted by roadsides and became known as ‘memorial avenues’. Here we’ll visit a memorial…
In previous posts I’ve often used images sourced from DigitalNZ to show something of the history of trees of interest. I’m not the only one who finds this resource useful as the following photo shows: This view looks south-eastward along Rimu Street in the Wellington seaside suburb of Eastbourne. It shows a good example of…
I’m reading Barefoot Years, Martin Edmond’s wonderful account of his childhood in Ohakune. He starts by reflecting on the childhood game of answering ‘what’s the first thing you remember?’ It’s a difficult task but it gets easier when he describes the second house his family lived in while his father was a teacher in Ohakune.…
In the last post on the Arrowsmith Phoenix Palms (Part 3: Partial Removals in Hastings) we saw what happened to the Phoenix palms Donald Arrowsmith photographed in Hastings in 1962. Unfortunately, it was discovered that by 2005 only one out of five palms remained. Development work and the siting of a new war memorial statue…
Recently I spent a week in the Wairarapa, based at Martinborough. To get there I took the train from Wellington to Featherston and then biked the 18 kilometres to Martinborough. While biking through Featherston I couldn’t help but notice two large Pinus radiata about which I made a mental note: ‘worth further attention’. Returning to…
In part 2 we jumped forward 63 years from when Donald Arrowsmith took his photographs in various locations which happened to also have Phoenix palms. We considered four cases where the palms were no longer growing due to the consequences of development. Below we’ll consider the interesting case of Photograph 258 – Street Scene in…
Unless affected by disease or pests, the Phoenix palm can live for 200 to 300 years.1 This means that even if the first plantings (late 1800s) in New Zealand were still growing they would still be relatively young. There is a strong chance that the oldest specimen would be in Auckland, not too far from…
It is well known that New Zealand has only one endemic palm, the nikau (genus Rhopalostylis with several species). It has come up in a few posts within this blog, but more commonly discussed have been Phoenix palms (Phoenix canariensis) and the Chinese fan palm (Trachycarpus fortunei). This weighting is not due to dislike of…
The Local Arboretum: Noticeable trees and their stories 