The Cultivation of Kauri

Forest and Bird, Issue 45, 1 August 1937, Page 14

The Cultivation of Kauri

(By Rakau).

THERE are those, even among foresters, who should know better, who declare it is hopeless to attempt the culture of Kauri timber. Their ignorance would be dispelled if they only took the trouble to read the accounts of actual experiments by men who knew what the Kauri was capable of under the right conditions. The late Sir Edwin Mitchelson, of Auckland, who was a bushman and sawmiller for many years, and the late Mr. Thomas Cheeseman, and others who were sound and practical authorities, always urged the cultivation of the Kauri. Sir David Hutchins, soon after his arrival in New Zealand, became a devotee of the Kauri; he wrote a splendid book dealing with it scientifically. Even in Wellington the Kauri has been grown successfully. A correspondent of the Wellington “Dominion” recently called public attention to a flourishing specimen Agathis Australis growing in Wadestown, less than 300 yards from the tramway terminus. It is 30 to 40 feet in height and between one and two feet' in diameter. It is probably fifty years old or a little more. There is a thriving Kauri tree in the Botanical Gardens in Wellington, and another in Christchurch. Seeing that Kauri grows here in the south quite well, far from its natural habitat, how much more readily it can be cultivated in the north! If foresters developed a wish to grow the Kauri, we could have many thousands of acres devoted to Kauri nurseries in North Auckland. Kauri grows more rapidly than European oak. The English, when they established oak forests looked far ahead; they had regard for the future timber needs of the nation. Why cannot foresters import a similar longsighted spirit into the official attitude towards the world’s most useful timber, the most valuable thing that ever grew on New Zealand soil?