Pohutukawa

The pohutukawa or New Zealand Christmas Tree, is one of the most outstanding plants of the entire New Zealand flora. It is an extremely tough tree and is found growing along coastal areas.

Photograph from Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, Artist Noeline Grant
click on picture for larger view

I remember looking out of the car window at these magnificent trees as our family drove a coastal road, in the northern part of New Zealand, on one of our vacations. I was impressed by how the pohutukawa’s roots gained a foothold in the most inhospitable of rock crevices where continual lashings of salt-laden winds and drenchings of salt water are the norm, and life giving fresh water and nutrients are scarce in the extreme. On very exposed rock faces where conditions are extremely barren it will at times grow little more than one metre, (about 39 inches) but will still flower profusely.


In the coastal forests the pohutukawa can grow into a spreading tree 20, metres or more in height. The leaves of the pohutukawa are thick and tough, a shiny dark green on top and silvery white on their softer undersides. The spectacular dark crimson flowers occur just before Christmas and the flowering period extends well into January. The first settlers used pohutukawa blossom to decorate their homes at Christmas time, regarding it as a New Zealand substitute for holly, and it was they who first applied the now common name of Christmas tree.

The pohutukawa was used by the early pioneers. The potential of its strong durable timber for ship building was soon realized, and in the early days of colonization shiploads of pohutukawa timber were exported, severely depleting the magnificent stands of trees which at one time dominated the northern coasts.

The leaves and bark of the pohutukawa were used for a variety of medicinal purposes by the Maori people, and many an early settler drank a decoction of inner bark of the pohutukawa tree to cure dysentery.