Giants Of The Forest

In this picture, Carol and Roger are standing in front of Tane Mahuta...the oldest living kauri tree.  There are a handful of trees in New Zealand so old and so large the Maori revered them as gods and gave them names.  Compared to California redwoods or giant sequoias, these trees are short.  The tallest kauri is only two-thirds as tall as the tallest redwood.

But in age these trees are elders to be respected, and in girth nothing is bigger.

The tree to the right is Tane Manoa, the third-oldest Kauri.  It is more than 45 feet in circumference...that's more than 14 feet in diameter.

The largest kauri ever found was twice as big around!

At the Kauri Museum, there is a display of a kauri tree that was taken down after it was it by lightning. It is nowhere near as large as the two trees mentioned above...so average in size the Maoris never bothered to name it.  Yet, you can see how huge even a medium-sized kauri can be.

To mill trees this large into lumber, sawmills with special equipment had to be built.

Not only are the trees big; they're old.  The trees in the first two pictures are dated at 2,000 years old.  The "middle aged" kauri in the photo above was also on display at the Kauri Museum.  Imagine trying to count that many growth rings!

It is possible to buy kauri today.  Carol checked out this slab at a local lumber yard.  How could we fit this on our bikes to take home?

The Kauri trees started to disappear as soon as British settlers arrived in New Zealand.  Because the trees grow slowly, the wood is very hardy and resistant to rot.

Juvenile kauris grow straight and tall before they start to branch out...perfect for the masts of Royal Navy sailing ships.  What was then the largest navy in the world took as many trees as they could for their ships.   They only wanted the wood between the stump and the lowest branch.  The rest, they left on the ground.

In World War II, the US Navy finished the job, taking kauri to build PT boats used in the Pacific Theater.

In the late 19th century, the wood was plentiful and cheap.

The photo at the left shows a single slab of kauri 12 ft long, four ft wide, and three in thick...used as a countertop in a general store...that sold to the store owner for about $15 in today's money.

Kauri was also used for furniture...while the wood lasted.  But no more.

Fewer than 5% of the kauri trees in New Zealand remain.  A fungus is killing off many of those.  The New Zealand Department of Conservation is doing everything it can to preserve the trees still alive.  Restoring the forests to what they once were remains a hope for the future.  

However, the harvesting of kauri trees is not an extinct industry.  

Photo courtesy of Kauri Logging Assn.

Between 10- and 50-thousand years ago, a series of catastrophic geological events uprooted thousands of kauri trees...burying them for millennia in wetlands.  As those wetlands dried up, timber companies are finding and extracting "swamp kauri." 






The rot-resistant properties of the wood that made it good for navy use have preserved the wood over all these centuries.  It's not furniture-grade, but it is used for turned bowls and slab table-tops.  The figure (grain pattern) is striking.