Christmas cheer comes early this year
A MILD winter and recent warm days have probably triggered the early flowering of a pohutukawa in Andersons Bay, Dunedin, University of Otago botanist Assoc Prof Janice Lord says.
But while there was a ‘‘surprising’’ variation in the timing of individual trees’ flowering, there was also a Dunedin connection to the genetic variation found among some of the muchloved trees in the South.
‘‘Flowering is often a combination of temperature and day length, and once you get to a certain day length, then temperature will be the cue,’’ Prof Lord said. ‘‘There’s quite a lot of variation among individual trees, though.’’
Prof Lord said the native species was not naturally found in the South but had been planted here as an amenity tree because it flowered every year, unlike its relative, the naturally occurring southern rata, which did not.
But over the past 20 years or so there could have been an increase in the distinctive red blooms in the city, she said, after the late Dunedin philanthropist Les Cleveland, known as ‘‘Mr Daffodil’’, bred a southern rata to flower more frequently, as well as a pohutukawa strain believed to fare better in colder climates.
‘‘So there’s a bit of genetic variation in the trees that are planted around, particularly more recently,’’ Prof Lord said.