New Zealand native trees: how to identify the ones you meet

Kauri: the bark tells you

The New Zealand Plant Conservation Network's kauri page describes forest trees 30 to 60 m tall with trunks 3 to 4 m across, occasionally up to 7 m, bare of branches for most of their height. The bark is blue-grey and peels off in large, thick flakes with scalloped edges; the underbark and the undersides of fallen flakes are rust-brown.

Adult leaves are thick and leathery, oblong and blunt, about 20 to 35 mm long. Juvenile leaves are much longer, 50 to 100 mm, narrow and pinkish-green. Female cones are round, 50 to 75 mm across. Kauri grows wild only in the North Island, from Te Paki south to around Kawhia in the west and Te Puke in the east, though it is planted further south. It was assessed as At Risk – Declining in 2023.

The Department of Conservation says the 1,500-year-old Tāne Mahuta is 51.5 m tall with a girth of 13.77 m. Kauri dieback, caused by the soil-borne Phytophthora agathidicida, infects trees through their roots and has no known cure. In kauri forest, stay on the tracks, keep soil off your gear and use the cleaning stations where they are provided.

Rimu and tōtara: the podocarps

Rimu and tōtara are conifers of the podocarp family. Neither carries a woody cone: their seeds sit on small fleshy, coloured structures.

Rimu. The network's rimu page calls it a distinctive species that could not be confused with any other native conifer. Young trees have many slender branches with drooping branchlets, so they look like they are weeping. Adult leaves are small, rigid and overlapping, pressed flat against branchlets that hang down. The dark brown bark peels in large, thick flakes and leaves pale, watermark-like scars. Mature trees reach about 60 m, bare of branches for roughly three-quarters of the trunk. Each seed sits in a fleshy red to deep-orange cup.

Tōtara. Its species page gives a tree up to 30 m tall with thick, corky, furrowed and somewhat stringy bark, reddish-grey in colour. The leaves are brownish-green, leathery and stiff, 15 to 30 mm long with a sharp tip, so a handful of foliage prickles. The red, swollen fruit carries a single seed. Tōtara is most often confused with Podocarpus laetus, which has thinner bark and sharper leaf tips.

Beech forest: read the leaf teeth

The native beeches are told apart on leaf size, leaf teeth and tiny pits on the leaf underside. Start with red beech, a tall tree of lowland to montane forest: the network's red beech page gives leaves 20 to 40 mm long with coarse, sharp teeth, 6 to 8 pairs, and a small hairy pit at the vein junctions. It grows to 30 m on a trunk often strongly buttressed, with flaky bark, from latitude 37° south in the North Island (except Mount Taranaki) and throughout the South Island.

If the leaves are much smaller than 20 mm or lack those coarse teeth, you are looking at another beech. Measure a leaf in the hand: a ruler settles more than a photo here.

Pōhutukawa, kōwhai and the cabbage tree

Pōhutukawa. The Department of Conservation calls it New Zealand's Christmas tree, for its blazing red flowers around Christmas. Mainland pōhutukawa grows naturally in the upper half of the North Island, north of New Plymouth and Gisborne, though it is planted throughout. It is told from rātā, its relative in the same genus, by the hairs on the underside of its leaves. Possums and myrtle rust both threaten it.

Kōwhai. The network's kōwhai page describes Sophora microphylla as a tree up to about 25 m with weeping branches, leaves up to 150 mm long made of 30 to 50 small, spaced leaflets 4.5 to 12.5 mm long, and yellow flowers hanging in clusters of up to seven from about August to October. Young plants have zig-zagging, interlacing branches. The pods are brown, four-winged and 50 to 200 mm long. The same page states that all parts of the plant are poisonous, especially the ripe yellow seeds. Never eat a berry, nut, seed or pod on the strength of a web page or an app; check with a local expert.

Cabbage tree. Tī kōuka (Cordyline australis) is not built like other trees: tufts of long narrow leaves, up to a metre long, sit on bare stems. The Department of Conservation gives a height of 12 to 20 m, scented flowers in early summer, and a range through farmland, wetlands and scrub of the North and South Islands, up to 1,000 m above sea level.

Using a photo, and what the app knows

None of the trees above is in Tree Identifier's 138-species Collection, the field-guide catalog that fills in as you identify; the nearest is a South American southern beech. A photo of any of them still returns a name, and you can ask the Tree Expert assistant a follow-up question, for example how to separate two beeches. The app needs an internet connection, so take the photo and identify it once you are back in coverage.

For conifers beyond the podocarps, see our conifer identification guide; for the very different trees across the Tasman, see Australian native trees. Bark-first methods that also work here are in how to identify trees by bark.