TOO HOT FOR TREES

Taranaki Daily News, 27 March 1937, Page 18 (Supplement)

TOO HOT FOR TREES

SOIL IN HOT SPRINGS DISTRICT. SOME PLANTS DIE AT ROTORUA. A number of big trees at Rotorua, the centre of New Zealand's hot springs district, are slowly dying. The reaspn given is that the roots have gone down so far into the earth that they have reached the place where the soil is too hot for roots to live. Such is the penaity trees have to pay for growing where the volcanie forces of the earths interior are seeklng to escape through the earth's crust. The latest o£ Rotorua's trees to fall a victim to the thermal forces underground is a giant sequoia, the big tree of California, which was planted 50 years ago, and has grown to a height of 91 feet, with a circumference of 22 feet. Rotorua is a garden town with wide tree-lined streets. It occupies a' plain on the shores of a great round lake of the same name. Every year thousands of tourists come from all over the world to see the geysers and boiling pools and to take advantage of the heaiing properties of the hot springs.