Tane Mahuta, God of the Forest

Tāne Mahuta, "Lord of the Forest" — the largest standing kauri tree in New Zealand. Photographed December 2003 by John Corney.

Tāne Mahuta — "Lord of the Forest" — is the largest standing kauri tree in New Zealand, growing in Waipoua Forest on the western coast of Northland, in what remains of a once-vast subtropical rainforest that covered much of the upper North Island. I photographed it on a visit back home in December 2003. It stands roughly 51.5 metres tall, with a trunk girth of around 13.8 metres, and its age is estimated at somewhere between 1,250 and 2,500 years — a range wide enough that "ancient" barely covers it.

The tree takes its name from Tāne, the Māori god of forests and birds. In Māori cosmology, Tāne is the son of Ranginui (the sky father) and Papatūānuku (the earth mother), who in the beginning lay locked together in a close embrace. It was Tāne who forced his parents apart, pushing the sky up from the earth to create light, space, and air, and it was Tāne who then clothed his mother in the forest we see today. Every living creature of that forest is considered his child — which makes a tree bearing his name and standing at this scale feel less like a curiosity and more like a fitting tribute.

Tāne Mahuta wasn't formally identified until January 1924, when surveyors cutting the route for what became State Highway 12 came across it in the bush. To local Māori, and to the Te Roroa iwi who are kaitiaki (guardians) of this forest in particular, the tree has long been regarded as a taonga — a treasure carrying both ecological and spiritual weight.

The forest around it holds other giants worth knowing: Te Matua Ngahere ("Father of the Forest"), not far away, is shorter but even stouter in girth, and the cluster known as the Four Sisters stands nearby as well. Together they're what's left of a kauri forest that once stretched across more than a million hectares of the North Island, before large-scale logging in the 1800s and early 1900s reduced it to a fraction of its original range.

These days the biggest threat to Tāne Mahuta isn't the axe but a microscopic one: kauri dieback disease, caused by a soil-borne pathogen that has no cure and can be spread on footwear from tree to tree. Visitors to Waipoua Forest are asked to use the cleaning stations at trailheads before and after walking, and a boardwalk now protects the tree's famously shallow root system from the compaction of thousands of visiting feet each year. It's a small ask in exchange for the chance to stand at the base of something this old.

For tree dimension statistics, see the New Zealand Tree Register listing for Tāne Mahuta.