The great pōhutukawa

Yesterday I mentioned that the pōhutukawa, Metrosideros excelsa, is one of the great indigenous trees of the northern part of New Zealand’s North Island. I meant great figuratively but also literally. Here you see a few pōhutukawas sprawling, as they’re wont to do, along a seaside bluff. It was early on the morning of February 27th, my last day in New Zealand, and I took advantage of it by spending an hour or two photographing along the shore at Little Manly Beach on the Whangaparaoa* Peninsula north of Auckland. (If you follow that link and then click on the little panoramic photo to invoke Google’s street view, you’ll be able to drag and rotate the scene 180° to get a look at the Hauraki Gulf from the road above the beach; in so doing, you’ll be looking at the upper part of the pōhutukawa trees from the opposite side. Isn’t technology wonderful?)

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* In words of Māori origin, wh is pronounced f.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman