Kauri

Description

New Zealand’s giant native conifer, the kauri, once dominated the northern landscape. Looming large in the lives of the country’s first inhabitants and later European settlers. The kauri, which grows up to 50m with trunk diameters of over 5m, can live for well over 1000 years. It has played a part in the lives of all inhabitants. It is celebrated in Māori myth and integral to early colonial history.

Over the centuries, kauri’s high-quality timber has yielded war canoes, ships’ spars, furniture and houses, and the industries that sprang up around it had a defining impact on early New Zealand society. Today, though the kauri forests are a shadow of their former selves. Their legacy lives on in New Zealand’s rich cultural inheritance.

Today forests face a new threat with kauri dieback. The challenges facing conservationists, botanists and scientists working to protect this unique trees’ future are examined.

Scientist and historian Joanna Orwin has shown, in a lively and richly informative style, how the remarkable story of the kauri is also the story of New Zealand in breath-taking detail.