POHUTUKAWA GLORY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 18, 22 January 1937, Page 3

POHUTUKAWA GLORY

"GRANDEST TREE I'VE SEEN" CITY GARDENS PRAISED "That you have planted so many about your city shows that you appreciate and admire your pohutulcawas, " but I still think that you don't appreI ciate them enough—they are the t grandest blossom trees I've seen." And that was only one of many expressions l of enthusiasm from an American visitor to Wellington. His work has t taken him to many countries and his s spare time has been largely given to > an interest in parks and gardens. Plant • life in New Zealand has greatly inter- ■ ested him and New Zealand bush, he 1 says, has an attraction and interest to every visitor, but of all its trees the ■ most beautiful to him are the crimson 1 blossomed pohutukawas. 1 As far as he knew the tree was un- ' known to Americans at home, though : much had been done in the planting 1 of the flowering gums from Australia. 5 He could see no reason why pohutu- ! kawas should not do well along the 1 Californian coast, where the temperature range would not put any strain 1 upon them once they had been nursed ; through* the tender stage and had gain- ' ed their firm foliage. "They don't : know them yet," he said, "but there 1 is room for trees as beautiful as "hese ■ in America, and if I can introduce them : there one good' thing will have come ' of this visit." ' The Botanical Gardens he praised very heartily. "Will you tell your 1 people as an appreciation from myself," he said, "that I can truthfully say that I have not seen, in any part of the world, after a lot of travelling, such variety and interest and colour in so small a space. Larger parks give wider vistas, but here there is wonderful variety, luxuriant growth, and splendid colour." TOO MODEST, "But why don't you New Zealanders tell the rest of the world and why I don't you particularly tell America what you have to offer?" he asked. "There are folk in America who travel across continents for a fishing holiday and spend tens of thousands on the few they do take. They would come here, too, if you were not so unfailingly modest about it. Perhaps it is that you hate to advertise your country. Then why'not hand the work over to an advertising organisation and let it take the blame for the satisfaction which hundreds of tourists would find in this country? About the first thing an advertiser would do would be to send catches of your Taupo trout back in ice. Photographs are photographs, but fish are fish, especially these fish. "You cannot send pohutukawas back in ice and no photograph will do them justice. That is why I hope to see them introduced and doing well in a few years on many banks and hillsides I can think of."