Russell Stone: Tree myths must make way for a bit of common sense

During the debate on the replanting of Queen St, people have said much about the trees supposed to have grown in the region we now know as Auckland.

Some assertions are at best speculative, others profoundly unhistorical.

The Auckland City Council has argued that "native planting including mature nikau palm and cabbage trees would reintroduce species that would have grown in the valley and upper street". How could they possibly know?

Or again, according to Michael Smythe, "Queen St was once a fertile valley" until colonists felled trees, flattened hills and so forth. And so, "replacing exotic deciduous trees with evergreen native palms and trees" is no more than "reclaiming a tiny bit of what was lost when the second wave of immigrants [Pakeha] imposed British models on this landscape".

It's about time that myth stood aside for reality. Using the research skills of botanists, archaeologists, and of historians who have analysed drawings and the testimony of European observers and of Maori witnesses before the Native Land Court, we can reconstruct with some confidence the original vegetative cover of the Tamaki Isthmus on which metropolitan Auckland stands.

Towering above all would have been forest giants of kauri, totara and rimu, descending to lesser trees such as kowhai, lancewood and titoki, then falling away to the profusion below of bush ferns and ground ferns.

For the first Maori immigrants the bush turned out to be an abundant source of timber, of firewood, and of birds, fern root berries and other fruit for food. But revered though the forest and its presiding god Tane were, both departed.

The reason is plain. In its heyday Tamaki was the most heavily populated place in Aotearoa. To support a population estimated to be at least 10,000, Maori operated a system of shifting cultivation.

The productive life of a kumara garden was usually three years. After that the garden was abandoned, given up to the restorative processes of nature. Then after about eight or nine years, the height of the secondary growth would indicate to the gardeners that regeneration of the soil was complete and that the site could be used once more.

The system worked. But shifting cultivation sets up a voracious demand for cleared land, especially if, as in Maori Auckland, the population was heavy and the volcanic soils famously productive. This explains why, as far back as 200 years before the arrival of Europeans, the greater part of the forest cover had been stripped from the Tamaki Isthmus.

The first European settlers who came to Auckland were astonished at what the missionary Walter Lawry called the "appalling baldness" of the landscape.

Before Auckland was founded and David Rough had become its first harbourmaster, he came ashore at St Marys Bay. Later in life he recalled that after climbing to the ridge along which Ponsonby Rd now runs he looked out on "a vast expanse of undulating country, mostly covered with fern and manuka shrub". However, he went on to say that in the "valleys and ravines" where the land fell away to the shore "many species of native trees still remained, while the projecting cliffs and headlands were crowned with pohutukawa trees".

Logan Campbell, Father of Auckland, wrote in his classic book of reminiscence, Poenamo, that the steep slopes of Remuera also kept their native bush.

But there is abundant evidence that the greater part of the isthmus was overgrown with scrub and fern.

What do the records tell us about the vegetation in the steep-sided valley, along the base of which the Horotiu Stream flowed in a course that has become today's Queen St?

The Horotiu was fed by a number of tributaries flowing down steep gullies that converged around Aotea Square. From there the stream followed an irregular course as far as Wyndham St where it became tidal. In its lower reaches until it met the shoreline near Swanson St and Fort St it oozed seaward through a flax swamp fringed by toetoe and a few pohutukawa.

Campbell, who, in December 1840, pitched his tent on the beach beside the mouth of the Horotiu, described the remainder of the vegetation in these terms: "A vast sea of fern of six-feet luxuriance swept away in all directions to the ridges beyond."

The historical record gives little ammunition for those who argue contending views in today's debate on the replanting of Queen St.

Rather than finish on a negative note may I offer a personal viewpoint. Dogma based on a mythical past is an uncertain guide. Compromise based on common sense, which lies at the heart of biculturalism, should provide a more acceptable solution.

* Russell Stone is emeritus professor of history at the University of Auckland.