White r¯at¯a find excites botanists

It is rarer than the ka¯ka¯po¯ and most people have never heard of it but a population of Bartlett’s white ra¯ta¯ is thriving in Lower Hutt.

Hutt City Council staff recently used a drone to survey trees in Percy Scenic Reserve and made an unexpected discovery.

One of the seven Bartlett’s ra¯ ta¯ was flowering, which means it has the potential to be used in a project that is trying to save the critically endangered tree.

There are only 13 Bartlett’s ra¯ ta¯ left in the wild and the population is too spread out for pollination.

Botanists and scientists from several organisations, including Te Papa and Otari Wilton Bush. are working to save the ra¯ta¯, which survives only on three sites in the Far North.

Otari Wilton Bush manager and president of the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network Rewi Elliot said the beautiful tree

faced an uncertain future. Bartlett’s is the only white tree ra¯ ta¯ and it has been decimated by possums and habitat destruction, and is also under

Myrtle rust.

It was discovered in the 1970s and since then the wild population has fallen from 34 trees to 13.

Although there are a number of Bartlett’s in cultivation, they are mostly clones from a single tree.

Otari Wilton had a cutting from a tree from Spirits Bay, which was planted in 1992. It did not flower until 2017 and Elliot said botanists were trying to work out how to pollinate it by hand.

Botanist were also working on how to store the seeds with Myrtle rust poising a major threat.

It was not clear if climate change was having an impact but with so few trees left in the wild finding a way to germinate and store the seeds was critical.

Although most people had never heard of white tree ra¯ ta¯ , he said the species was more at risk than the ka¯ ka¯ po¯ and other highprofile bird species. threat from