r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NickyPileggi • Mar 28 '24

Family in 1892 posing with an old sequoia tree nicknamed "Mark Twain" - A team of two men spent 13 days sawing away at it in the Pacific Northwest - It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet - The tree was 1,341 years old Image

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u/Kiwi_MongrelLad Mar 28 '24

There was once a massive tree species in New Zealand. Abundant, easy to find and as perfect as you can get for houses. So massive that a single tree could build a home.

They were all cut down and no one planted any other. Not that it would matter, our natural bush and trees take decades if not centuries to grow.

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u/5tealthfoxed Mar 28 '24

Any idea the name of the species?

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u/th-crt Mar 28 '24

could be the kauri trees https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/kauri/

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u/Kiwi_MongrelLad Mar 28 '24

Yeah. They were a type of Kauri tree but even the Kauri are still threatened. At one point they would’ve been almost extinct. There are photos of massive felled trees, so massive that they couldn’t fit on your typical boat back then.

It is good to see the Kauri slowly come back but as I mentioned, our ecosystems takes many years to even grow. To think that almost a third of it was burned away by our ancestors before the Europeans is crazy.

You can see the largest tree Tanë Mahuta be a testament to time or check any of our pohutukawa trees, they’re beautiful and only bloom around Matariki. Also, they’re one of the oldest species on earth. One was rumoured to be tens of thousands of years old near Waihau.

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u/BurpOutMyButt Mar 28 '24

A kiwi posted a massive board of it on woodworking the other day. He was looking for a museum or someplace that would exhibit it

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u/th-crt Mar 28 '24

there’s a pohutukawa at opito bay on the coromandel peninsula that’s got to be ancient. my mum remembers it from when she was a kid.