The Kauri tree (Agathis australis) used to be widespread in Northland, Auckland and Coromandel Peninsula, down a latitude of about 38°, or a line from Raglan Harbour through Hamilton to a little south of Tauranga. They have been grown successfully in Dunedin, in the south of the South Island, but do not to self-propogate there. No fossil evidence has been found of any earlier existence of kauri forests south of their present-day range.
The kauri is among the largest trees in the world. Tane Mahuta (Maori for 'Lord of the Forest'), in Waipoua Forest Sanctuary (pictured right), is usually cconsidered to be the largest at 45.2 m tall and has a girth of 13.8 m. The main trunk is 17.8 m tall and contains 255 cubic metres of wood. The total wood volume, including the 35 m wide crown, is 517 cubic metres, making this tree just a bit larger than the largest known Western Redcedar (Thuja plicata). Kauri is the largest tree in the Araucariaceae family and the world’s third largest conifer, after Sequoiadendron and Sequoia.
It has been estimated that when Europeans arrived in Aotearoa-New Zealand there were about 1,215,000 hectares of kauri forest. Of these, only about 142 hectares remain, Salmon (1966). The Waipoua Forest and the nearby Warawara Forest, are estimated to contain 75% of the kauri now standing.
The first written records of New Zealand kauri were made not by Tasman or Cook but in May 1772 by members of the French expedition to the Pacific led by Marion du Fresne. Du Fresne felled a kauri in Manawaora Bay to replace the foremast on the one of his ships, the Marquis de Castres. Since then kauri has been put to all manner of uses including boat building, houses, offices and government buildings, railway carriages, telegraph poles and furniture making. A fascinating display of the use of kauri and kauri gum in the early days of European settlement can be seen at the Matakohe Kauri Museum, south of Dargaville. Reed (1956), however, reported that “since the arrival of the European, more kauri has been lost as result of fire and wasteful methods of exploitation than has been used in the service of man.”
Now kauri are protected and felling of kauri is very rare and typically only for cultural purposes, such as the building of waka. As well as also using trees that have already died, some waka have been carved from “swamp kauri” which has been preserved in peat swamps, often for 40-50,000 years before recovery.
The person on the right is 1.73 metres tall
First cuts in a kauri from the Herekino State Forest used in building the waka hourua Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti
Reading:
Reed, A H, (1953), The New Story of the Kauri, AH and AW Reed, Wellington, 363pp
Salmon, J T, (1996), The Native Trees of New Zealand (3rd ed.). Reed Books, Auckland, pp 94-99
Links:
Old Government Building (this, the largest wooden building in the Southern Hemisphere, was built in kauri)
Click here to email us. Copyright Arawai Ltd. All rights reserved
Home | Maori waka | Te Aurere | Construction | Hekenukumai
