NZ Visual Diary - entry 409
Venerable Pohutukawa - Silo Park Playground
Māori revere the pohutukawa tree for its beauty and honour the tree with sacred regard in their mythology. I first spied the pohutukawa tree in 2007, during our first visit to New Zealand, when our Kiwi daughter took the family to Cornwall Park and Auckland Domain. Both parks have majestic stands of towering pohutukawa trees with heights of 20m and canopy spans of 10-50m.
Again, during that first visit to New Zealand, I captured a Sunday morning photograph at Bucklands Beach of a gentleman comfortably nestled under the protective canopy of a pohutukawa tree as he studied his Sunday Herald newspaper. The photograph reveals the distinctive red flowering that occurs annually in December, hence the pohutukawa’s nickname: the Christmas tree.
Today’s top-of-the-screen image features my outright favourite pohutukawa tree in the Wynyard Quarter precinct where my wife and I live. While not as mighty in height as many pohutukawa, the tree’s majestic shape and prominence as the visual anchor at the western edge of Silo Park playground imbue it with landmark stature.