Avenues of rata to grace city

By Philip English

Ted Wilson has always been keen on growing things.

It's over 60 years since he helped plant kauri along Greenlane's Aratonga St while a student at Cornwall Park School, but he's still planting native trees, and encouraging children to do the same.

He's also right behind Project Crimson. Its supporters have spent years helping pohutukawa numbers recover from the onslaught of possums and, since 1996, have worked to re-establish rata in the South Island and lower North Island. Now the organisation is returning rata to the streets of Auckland and Northland.

When Project Crimson kicked off the campaign with a rata planting in Cornwall Park last week, 72-year-old Mr Wilson got pupils from his old school involved.

"Rata has a close association with pohutukawa, but is not so well known.

"People do not know much about it because it has not got much of a profile, but it's a nice tree."

A major problem for the Project Crimson rata campaign has been finding seeds, because the trees are often hard to get to. However, Mr Wilson has pioneered growing the trees from seed.

"We had heard it was quite difficult to grow rata from seed but I tried it and it was easy. The problem is getting the seeds."

One of the main differences between waxy-leafed rata and pohutukawa is the furry underside of pohutukawa leaves. The similarities include their crimson flowers.

Rata has also suffered as a delicacy of possums, which can eat a rata to death in three years.

A number of rata species exist. Northern rata, growing from North Cape to Hokitika, and southern rata, growing all over New Zealand, are the most common. One species, Bartletts rata, has a white flower, but only 30 adult trees survive.

Northern rata usually begins life as an epiphyte - a plant growing on another plant, although not in a parasitic relationship. But its roots eventually smother its host and the rata can then grow into one of New Zealand's tallest flowering trees, with lower trunks of up to 3m in diameter.

A dieback in northern rata has been occurring since the 1930s throughout its range, and is thought to be due to possums. Severe defoliation is occurring on the Coromandel Peninsula. Another concern is a lack of young trees in the Waitakere Ranges.

But Mr Wilson still takes a delight in spotting remaining rata in native forests because of their distinctive bunchy foliage. "I pointed one out to my wife coming back from the Coromandel Peninsula last week and she said, 'Keep your eyes on the road'."