Kohekohe
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| Kohekohe | ||||||||||||||
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| Dysoxylum spectabile |
Kohekohe (Dysoxylum spectabile) is a medium-sized tree native to New Zealand. It is found in lowland and coastal forests throughout most of North Island and also occurs in the Marlborough Sounds in the north of the South Island. Mature trees grow up to 15m in height, with a trunk up to a metre in diameter. Kohekohe forest used to be common in damp coastal and lowland areas in the North Island, but these forests have mostly disappeared because the land was used for settlement or they were browsed by possums.
Kohekohe is notable for having characteristics normally associated with trees growing in the tropics, for example, it is cauliflorous, producing panicles of scented white flowers which grow directly from the trunk or branches, and it has large, glossy, pinnate leaves up to 40mm in length. Kohekohe is sometimes known as New Zealand Mahogany, because its wood is light, strong and polishes to a fine red colour.
Māori boiled the bark in water and drank it as a tonic. The wood was used for building canoes but the wood is soft and not as durable as hardwoods and tends to rot quickly. It is valued for carving. Kohekohe was probably the dominant vegetation cover on Kapiti Island before it was cleared in the early 1800s for cultivation and farming. The kohekohe forest on Kapiti is recovering after possums were eradicated in 1986.
[edit] References
- Dysoxylum spectabile. New Zealand Plant Conservation Network. Retrieved on 2007-06-20.
- Dysoxylum spectabile. Flora of New Zealand. Retrieved on 2007-06-20.
- Kohekohe. An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, 1966. Retrieved on 2007-06-20.
