POHUTAKAWA

Metrosideros excelsa

The quintessential northern holiday: sun drenched beach, family gathering,picnic food and as a backdrop a pohutakawa in full crimson flame.

"Without a doubt it is one of the top ten flowering trees in the world,"  Graeme Platt.

"In the North, a beach isn't a beach without  pohutakawa trees around it."

Crooked gnarled furrowed limbs span 10 or more metres, often cantilevered out from sheer cliffs.  The whole totured frame looks to have endured a thousand years of adversity, even when it has only seen fifty summers. (Page 106, New Zealand Geographic, #28; oct-dec 1995)

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