Flowering Pohutukawa

As I write this, I am glancing out my window to see the Pohutukawa in flower. With those not familiar with the tree, it is one of our country’s most beautiful, flowering at this time of year with bright red flowers, similar to a bottle brush. They like coastal regions and so are plentiful out this way.

There is nothing more beautiful than a tree laden with its flowers. Some have referred to it as our Christmas tree. As well as its beauty, the tree has a significant spiritual meaning for Maori, connecting the beginning and ending of human life. Often a child’s afterbirth is buried beneath it and visited by the child as they grow, providing a place of strength and grounding to draw on.

In the First Light Flower Essences of New Zealand, Pohutukawa is used to promote initiative, self-awareness, self-assertion, and a strong sense of self. It can be used to treat people who are easily influenced or over eager to please, for example.

Flowering generally starts about mid-November and finishes in the new year. It is believed that if the Pohutukawa flowers early, it will be a long, hot summer.

I love colour and I love flowers, so I am particularly drawn to this tree. I remember as a child helping my father plant one at our bach at the sea. I revisited that section many years later and saw the Pohutukawa was now a magnificent tree, helping to keep the eroding bank in situ.

It is a lovely time with these trees just after flowering as they provide a bright red carpet, as their finished flowers drop to the ground. I am a great believer in colour for healing and sitting under a tree with a beautiful floor of red beneath, is certainly uplifting.

When I first moved here, a friend gave me a variegated seedling. I knew I didn’t really have the room for the tree it would become but planted it anyway. It has thrived in its position, so I will leave it where it is. I wish the hibiscus would do as well as this Pohutukawa is doing but that is a lesson I have learnt while living here. The area produces harsh conditions with the sandy soil, drought-like summers and most notably raging winds. The winds seem to be the worst.

But it is these typical coastal conditions that the Pohutukawa love. The trees I am looking at as I write this, are on my neighbour’s section. I am thankful for the forethought of whoever it was who planted them. As well as their magnificent colour at this time of year, they also provide much needed privacy and shelter from the north wind. They are not close enough to interfere in our sun so a win win situation all around.

I look forward to my upcoming drives, for there are many Pohutukawa around the Bay which will soon be displaying their beauty. Photographing them is not so easy as often the flowers are too high, but I will try again this year to get a decent pic. And I will try to capture the one I am looking at with my camera. But that won’t be today’s photo. The one I will post with this blog was taken about five years ago at Coopers Beach.