AN EXPERT OPINION

My first visit to Pouakani in 2011 was with botanist and author Dr Philip Simpson on a field trip to the Central North Island, the home of some of NZ’S largest tōtara. I’d photographed many tōtara to contribute to his book, Tōtara: A Natural and Cultural History, published in 2017.

Philip explains that seeds or debris at the base of a tōtara usually reveals whether the tree is male or female. He believes the Pouakani tōtara is most likely female.

Listening to his expert knowledge gave me an in-depth perspective of these trees, the surrounding podocarp forest, and the cultural and spiritual meaning of the forest for Māori. I also discovered New Zealand was built around the timber milled from our native forests, particularly tōtara, because of its sheer size and quality.

Philip says, “Tōtara was the number one timber for the evolution of both the culture of iwi (for waka and carving) and the pākehā culture that followed (for houses, fences, railway sleepers and telegraph poles). A family could get off the boat with an axe and build a life from the tree.”

Philip dedicated eight years of his life to writing his book on what he says are the most magnificent of New Zealand native trees. “Approaching a very old tōtara gives me a sense of pilgrimage – a journey to a sacred place,” he says. “An old tree has a special presence, the spirit of life. An old tōtara is also humbling, instilling reverence for its endurance, awe for its size, amazement that it has stood for a thousand years, thankfulness for what it has lived for ecologically. I think of what it has lived through: eagles in its massive boughs, moa eating its seeds beneath, enormous snow and windstorms; prolonged droughts and earthquakes; the arrival of humans; possums browsing its foliage; fire and nearby logging. An old tōtara has command over the bush like a leader, a chief, a rakau rangatira. It’s impossible to dismiss it as ‘just a tree’.”