DID YOU KNOW?

At Mahurangi East, near Warkworth in Northland, there’s a Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla) of international interest. It’s not the tallest, but when last measured in 2009, it had the largest known girth, almost 10m, of any Norfolk Island pine in the world! Over 170 years old, it would be taller than it is now but for damage caused around the 1940s, when a girl was dared to climb to the top. To prove she’d made it all the way up she broke off the growing tip, which caused the tree to die back several metres and stunted its vertical growth. You can see the tree from the end of Hamilton Road, growing on a Department of Conservation riparian strip alongside the Mahurangi River. To get closer to it you have to cross private land, for which permission should be obtained.

– The NZ Tree Register