My Story

As we competed for space and nutrients, the weakest of us died. At 25 years old, I became an adolescent, with a slender trunk and short branches that tapered to a narrow crown of leaves. My siblings and I stood shoulder to shoulder, keeping out other competing trees. As we thrust our way upwards towards the roof of the forest, we began shedding our lower branches. It took me the best part of 80 years to break out into the light. By then I had a tall straight trunk crowned by a ring of strong branches that I held high above the forest.

Tane Mahuta Lord of the Forest, Waipoua Forest

At the same time, the branches and bark platelets we continually shed were forming mounds of litter at our feet. Efficient recyclers, we extracted nutrients from our own shed skins to continue our growth in girth over many hundreds of years. Our litter is acid enough to exclude most other plants, helping us preserve this patch for ourselves. Shorter-lived trees and plants around our patch died and were replaced, but we lived on. We were now undisputed kings of the forest. Our crowns supported many other plants, forming a living garden high above the forest. Kokako sang from the tips of our branches and kaka nested in hollowed-out cracks in our trunks. After 500 years only a few of us were left, towering over the surrounding forest.

Tides of change