Totara A Natural and Cultural History

The ‘mighty totara’ is one of New Zealand's most extraordinary trees. Among the biggest and oldest trees in the New Zealand forest, the heart of Maori carving and culture, trailing no. 8 wire as fence posts on settler farms, clambered up in the Pureora protests of the 1980s: the story of New Zealand can be told through totara. Simpson tells that story like nobody else could. In words and pictures, through waka and leaves, farmers and carvers, he takes us deep inside the trees: their botany and evolution, their role in Maori life and lore, and their current status in New Zealand's environment and culture.

Philip Simpson is a botanist and author of Dancing Leaves: The Story of New Zealand’s Cabbage Tree, Ti Kouka (Canterbury University Press, 2000) and Pohutukawa and Rata: New Zealand’s Iron-hearted Trees (Te Papa Press, 2005).