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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 8 (February 1, 1933)

New Zealand Trees

New Zealand Trees.

Surely in all the world there is no country whose trees are more varied and more eloquent of wealth than here in this remote Pacific dot. They talk of the greenness of England, of her oaks great with the years, of her poplars and slender ash and elm, of her softly weeping willows. They tell of the grandeur of German forests, dark and old and sublime, parent of firs and Christmas; they show us Canada from shore to shore cherishing her wide timber lands, where wolves prowl and lumber camps are many. Books have been written of the Australian bush, with its adventures and its secret cool beauty. But here in New Zealand we have it all—trees of other lands flourish in our islands and rise arrogantly among our splendid natives. There is all the greenness of England, all the majesty of Canada, all the tangled tortuous undergrowth of Java.

I climbed a great range in the Thames peninsula and found myself, indeed, on a road, but otherwise in the heart of impenetrable forest, unequalled in its amazing beauty through all the world. Out in the bay the islands of Auckland slept in a haze of blue; below, flaming pohutukawas growing grotesquely from sheer cliffs hung into a tepid sea—the Christmas tree of the Maoris. Giant kauris—kings of the forest—rose in tremendous pride their delicately tinted trunks straight and strong—trees which have given, wealth to the land. Luxuriant growths clustered greedily in every fork—ratas and rimus and strange climbing things. Just beyond, in the valley, were poplars like sentinels, and English willows and fairy fragile birches.

Let the lover of oaks, he who admires space and strength and massive virility in trees, let this man stand beneath the shadow of a great puriri tree, looking up into the luscious greenness of its leaves, at its fruity bright berries, at its branching dark trunk—let him look and love.

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