Nikau Palm is a photoautotroph. The nikau thrives on cool temperatures, but is not subject to freezing weather in its natural habitat. They seem a kind of testament to the nikau’s valour in the face of ceaseless conflict with the north-west wind. Māori found many uses for the nikau palm. Why do this? When the early settlers ran out of proper ammunition, they sometimes used these pellets as birdshot—probably to shoot pigeons. The Kermadec Nikau is a close cousin of the New Zealand mainland variety. Some seem to go rotten where cattle rub up against them, and every year a storm takes one or two. Can Roots of the Palm Tree damage underground pipes? Share. They have long been isolated from the mainland, and many botanists believe they should be recognised as a distinct species, like the nikau of some even more remote rocky outposts. Transplanting juveniles is generally successful if the main root is left intact. Nikau technology continues to evolve, and now it circulates through cyberspace. On the forest floor the fallen leaves become part of the mulch that nurtures thousands of nikau seedlings, often forming a dense mat. It’s like going through human evolution in reverse. So it would enjoy being kept in a shady part of your … The Chatham Islands form is particularly different, having a distinct juvenile form and larger fruits, and a thicker covering of fine hairs on the fronds. A stunningly attractive option for the coast, it fits into a contemporary landscape design with ease. At Scotts Beach, a scatter of driftwood shelters artfully thatched with nikau fronds testify to the many travellers who have lingered here. Soil in the area is good draining and rainfall is ample. Some are still covered in a thin coat of wrinkled red flesh, but foot traffic has skinned most of them, leaving just the bullet-hard kernel. Floating down the Oparara River on a rubber Lilo in the heat of summer, you could easily fancy yourself to be in the heart of Borneo. The Rhopalstylis is a genus containing just two species of palm including the most southerly palm the Chatham Island Nikau and the other confined to Norfolk Island with a variety on the Kermadec Islands. The following morning breaks warm and clear. Around the next bend one of the nikau has shucked off its lowest leaf, and from beneath it a rosy inflorescence erupts into the world through a diaphanous sheath made from a pair of boat-shaped inner leaves. More research is needed into its precise … The nikau palms which line the river’s banks may have been part of a cargo of plants and animals from the Malayo-Pacific region that began arriving in New Zealand when dinosaurs were still chasing each other up and down what is today Queen Street. The nikau palm shows considerable variation in the wild. This was the “palm cabbage” that was served up to the crew of Endeavour. The nïkau is very slow-growing. Best grown in part shade, though they will tolerate full sun. Rhopalostylis baueri, the Norfolk Island Palm, is native to two locations. The pots should be tall and narrow to provide room for the taproot and to lessen the likelihood of root damage when transplanting. I imagine the embarrassment of starving to death in one of the world’s smallest wilderness areas. In his book Nga Uruora: The Groves of Life, Geoff Park says that there are really only two places left on the West Coast where you can walk out of protected sand-plain forest onto a wild beach. The crocs and coconuts didn’t survive the ice ages, but nikau palms came through. Many smaller species originate from forests where they grow beneath the canopy of evergreen trees. If only they could get away to a less crowded nursery, their chances of survival would be much improved—which, of course, is the service the pigeons provide: a food-for­dispersal arrangement. Although nikau occur naturally from North Cape to about the latitude of Akaroa, nowhere are they a more striking part of the landscape than on the South Island West Coast. One answer might be to create a tropical feeling in a cool climate. After attempting to capture something of the rather haunted atmosphere of the place on film, I fold away the tripod and start making my way back to the road. I realise that it was, for a time (and possibly still today), politically correct to plant native plants in every commercial planting. Nikau. Two of the ea… It's quite a steep walk up to the lookout and gets the heart racing - an excellent workout. Perhaps the young tree is being battle-hardened for life on the street. The nikau produces flowers between November and April, and fruits ripen from February to November, taking almost a year to fully ripen. Agave Decipiens $15 - 40. The Nikau grows up to 15 m tall, with a stout green trunk which bears grey-green leaf scars. There’s no boardwalk here, no dispenser of explanatory leaflets complete with map. They occur from about 44° northern latitude to about 44° southern latitude. Great privacy palm with large spanning leaves creating a barrier. Grows around 10m. It is a slow-growing palm that thrives in cooler environments. $1 trial for two weeks, thereafter $8.50 every two months, cancel any time. On average two fronds are shed per year leaving behind a leaf scar on the trunk which can be used to give a rough indication of age since the trunk began forming. With my bloodstained clothes in shreds I must look like Ben Gunn, but feel like Sir Ed Hillary. The fronds made an excellent waterproof thatch for buildings and could be woven into baskets and mats. On the Internet I find a picture of a beaming Sea Scout showing how to use the tough midrib of a nikau leaf to make a splint should some hapless shipmate break an arm or leg. Westland Illmenite still has a site office almost opposite the reserve and has bought up the dairy farms on either side, including the paddock with the Stanley Palmer nikau. And when we put in the electric fence a couple of ’em kept dropping leaves on it, shorting it out,” he says. Bangalow Queen King Kentia Palms are extremely popular. Compare that with the 150 people a year said to be killed by falling coconuts and you may be glad that nikau only produce a lot of indigestible berries. Please create one below, or sign in if you already have one. Palm trees are a common sight in New Zealand and are much loved for their graceful elegance and how they add a hint of the tropics to any area. I wonder how much longer they can withstand the powerful forces ranged against them. New Zealand's only native palm. It is formed by the numerous overlapping leaf bases, each one of which completely encircles the trunk of the palm. Indeed, the New Zealand nikau palm, Rhopalostylis sapida, is the most southerly growing palm tree in the world. Hibiscus. Then, crossing into Paparoa National Park, the scenery changes dramatically. They are so closely packed that there is little room for anything else—just the odd rimu old and ugly enough to put up with the shoving from a lot of boisterous young palm trees. Candidate #5: The Nikau (Rhopalostylis sapida) The only native palm of neighbouring New Zealand, it is also ideal for the South Australian climate. Hedging Trees. The point here is that, as a species, the Nikau Palm is slow growing in its natural habitat. “They’re elegant, strong and representative of the Wellington region. The growth is concentrated in just one area, about a third of the way up the trunk. It occurs from North Cape to Banks Peninsula, Hokitika and the Chatham Islands. As for those old friends along the Greymouth-to-Karamea highway, let’s hope we can persuade them to stick around for another couple of hundred years at least. The nikau does not have a true tap root. Plants from the South Island and the offshore islands of the North Island have larger, more-gracefully-arching fronds and are popular in cultivation. The fruit is elliptic or oblong, and generally measures about 10 by 7 mm, and is red when ripe. Rhapalostylis sapida Nikau A plant of the palm family that reaches 10 metres. Nīkau is a Māori word; in the closely related Eastern Polynesian languages of the tropical Pacific, it refers to the fronds or the midrib of the coconut palm. One of the world’s most southern palms, also known as Chatham Island Nikau. The bright green trunks of the nikau are almost luminous in the subterranean shade of this crazy log-jam of a forest. The most southerly and probably hardiest of all nikau are those found growing on the Chatham Islands. Early settlers called this dish “millionaire’s salad,” because removal of the heart cost the palm its life. Found mostly in coastal lowland and hilly forests throughout the north island except the central plateau. (Rhopalostylis Sapida “Chathamica”) We have a range in sizes from 3m – 6m. Once the male flowers have shed all of their pollen they fall off, leaving the fertilised female flowers to swell and ripen. Delays should be avoided in getting the nikau into its new ground, and substantial die-back of all but the central spike can be expected. Strangely, there hasn’t always been the same enthusiasm for New Zealand natives at home in Aotearoa as overseas. But don’t be fooled. It will be dark soon, and it occurs to me that no one knows I’m here. Nearly a century later, Lowe does admit to having to lose one or two during the period of his stewardship. Concealed beneath the lowest leaf, the coral-pink flower buds are swelling. North of Auckland nikau have shorter, more slender trunks than their southern relatives. In The Natural World of the Maori, ethnologist Margaret Orbell states that the word “nikau” is derived from the Tahitian word for the leaf of the coconut palm, which the nikau closely resembles­ sans nuts. It’s slow-growing and needs very moist soil. Headless ones left standing in the aftermath of storms feature in several Stanley Palmer paintings. You wouldn’t want to be underneath, but even if you were a very unlucky tramper and the solid leaf base hit you dead on, it might break your nose but not your skull. The leaf base splits down the middle and leaves a neat circular scar round the trunk as it falls away. Fushias. Relatively slow … On my way back to Karamea I stop off for a closer look at Lowe’s section. Stopping in my tracks, I listen for traffic on the road. This is a New Zealand native palm with a couple of difficult to differentiate sub species, the main being the NZ mainland variety with the others I know of being a Banks Peninsula form and one from Norfolk and Kermadec Island(s) called R bauerii, which is reputed to be a lot faster growing, though perhaps not as cold hardy as the NZ nikau. We have a wide variety of species available - come and take a look! Rhopalostylis sapida, the nikau (Māori: nīkau) is a palm tree endemic to New Zealand, and the only palm native to mainland New Zealand. It’s tempting to imagine that counting these rings provides a measure of the age of a palm, but it’s not that simple. For example, the roots of Palm tree species like Royal, Bismarck, Bailey, and Canary Island date palms, grow up to 50 feet away from the trunk. Bomeliads. The leaves of northern nikau are shorter, too, and stand more upright than the graceful arching style adopted in the south. [2], Nikau images and artworks, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rhopalostylis_sapida&oldid=994093337, IUCN Red List conservation dependent species, Use New Zealand English from February 2020, All Wikipedia articles written in New Zealand English, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 14 December 2020, at 02:10. Nikau fringe a golden beach where surfers ride the nor’west swells that sweep in from the Tasman Sea. Anyone familiar with the work of artist Stanley Palmer would recognise this landscape. It is arguably the fastest growing variety as well. You begin to spot them in amongst the rimu and rata on the descent to the Heaphy River. Agave Attenuata $12 - $50. It would be hard to imagine the Coast without nikau, and yet you can drive for miles without seeing any. There is an easy loop walk you can take or you can choose to walk to the top. It also occurs on Chatham Island and Pitt Island/Rangiauria to the south-east of New Zealand, where it is the world's southernmost palm at 44° 18'S latitude. No one seems to know how long nikau live, but the old ones can’t be expected to carry the torch forever. A slow growing palm up to 15 meters in height with dark green upright foliage that gives the palm a shuttlecock shape on top of a trunk that shows off the marks of where the fronds were . Pelargoniums; Sub Tropicals. Ask your librarian to subscribe to this service next year. Eighty-year-old farmer Joffre Lowe remembers a time when the pigeon population was much larger than it is today. Food was wrapped in the leaves for cooking, and the old fibrous leaves were used for baskets, floor mats, and waterproof thatch for buildings. It does well in areas with a mild Mediterranean climate. Why grow palms in a place that’s colder than where they grow naturally? The nikau makes an excellent potted plant, and is quite hardy. Growing Info . As for the colony of Nikau palms at Palm Gully, south of Akaroa on Banks Peninsula on the east coast of the South Island near Christchurch, it is not at all certain that this is a natural population. But when you’re finally ready to cross the Kohaihai Saddle back to civilisation, the Heaphy finishes in style. There they grow in the sort of setting and at the level of abundance that would have been common in pre-land-clearance days. The exotic Phoenix palm was always the plant of choice if you wanted to make a big majestic statement in front of your council chambers, railway station or RSA. On special occasions, or in extremis, Maori would prepare a meal from the central leaf bud—the succulent heart of the nikau. They managed to slug it out with the elements and other plants as far south as Hokitika on the West Coast, … This page requires an NZGeo.com account. I stop by Lowe’s cottage to ask him about a nikau grove near the “Welcome to Karamea” sign on the Kohaihai–Karamea road. It grows readily from seed if the fruit is soaked in water for a few days and then gently scrubbed to remove the flesh. Many more! Twenty minutes later I realise with a frisson of panic that I’m hopelessly bushed. They have adapted naturally to low light which enables them to grow in similar conditions indoors. Nice pies” provides a sensible note of caution given the Coast’s reputation for weather and offers a useful indication of the highlights of local cuisine. In urban settings, nikau have been sadly overlooked in favour of their larger, brasher relative the Phoenix palm. Nikau might be perfect for him. Aloes. [1], The nikau palm is the only palm species endemic to mainland New Zealand. The Chatham Nikau is proving itself to be the hardiest to frost and drought of the Nikau varieties and species. Nothing extraordinary in that, you may say, but I’ve got to know the West Coast road pretty well now, and I think I could draw a map showing where all the best nikau are from a car-window perspective. Nīkau palms also grow on the Chatham Islands, and some botanists believe the plants there belong to a separate species. The majority of seedlings are doomed to become compost before ever reaching maturity. A faster-growing Palm growing up to 15 meters in height with fronds that tend to arch more gracefully with a tight feather duster appearance to them. The fronds are up to 3m long, and the closely-set, sometimes overlapping leaflets are up to 1 m long. Its skinny trunk has been burned by cigarettes, carved, gummed and graffitied. The Nikau palm shows considerable variation in the wild. Sun and wind battered, they never seem to retain the health that they do in the sheltered gullies they call home. The Chatham Islands form is particularly different, having a distinct juvenile form and larger fruits, and a thicker covering of fine hairs on the fronds. A flower cluster forms at the base of each leaf of a nikau palm, but only about a third of the clusters develop. “They’re a lowland species. Mature leaves are shed between October and May. The bases fit snugly one inside the next like the leaves of a leek. Nothing. It also occurs on Chatham Island and Pitt Island/Rangiauria to the south-east of New Zealand, where it is the world's southernmost palm. Agave Americana $20 - … While only the Nikau is endemic to New Zealand, there are now over 100 palm species you can grow here. AKA Rhopalostylis sapida . Camelias. Unlimited access to every NZGeo story ever written and hundreds of hours of natural history documentaries on all your devices. There’s $100 million dollars’ worth of titanium under those palm trees, and a change in the market for titanium or a shift in the political climate could bring the bulldozers back at any moment. Maori found that the pith had mild laxative properties, and a drink made from the sap is said to have eased the pain of childbirth. Once the main root has been established to a fairly shallow depth of about 400 mm, its roots take on form consistent with other palms. Rhopalostylis baueri, on Norfolk Island, and Rhopalostylis cheesemanii, in the Kermadecs, closely resemble the southern race of Rhopalostylis sapida, except that their leaves are more spreading, their berries are larger and the plants are said to be faster growing. There are around 14 leaves on show at any one time, with their shafts spaced around the crown at regular 135-degree intervals. It tends to be slow-growing. Most palm trees grow in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Excellent for all coastal areas; High tolerance for … Along K’ Road, Auckland’s funkiest boulevard, the sun sets behind St Kevin’s Arcade, and out front the fronds of a municipal nikau extend skeletal fingers into the night. Not only are Nikau palms quite unsuited to such conditions but being slow growing they take many months to replace damaged leaves. If you sit amongst them for a while, you’ll hear the frequent clunk of a falling frond. They can be found on the South Island as far south as Banks Peninsula on the east coast and Whanganuii bluffs on the west coast. It’s a big thing over there now—tropical-looking plants which can survive Britain’s cold, wet, dark winters. I have 2 growing very close to my brick wall.Someone has mentionedthat these are not good for the foundation of the wall.Can anyone confirm this for m. Do It Yourself! With their more robust configuration, nikau of the south look a lot tougher than the effete northerners, and they are capable of withstanding far harsher conditions. Gorse and manuka scrub cover the scars in a landscape torn up by mining and forestry. Plants from the South Island and the offshore islands of the North Island have larger, more gracefully arching fronds and are popular in cultivation. They rarely reach more than 15 m in height, while specimens exceeding 20 m are not uncommon further south. New Zealand’s only native palm, our specialty, and biggest seller. Every year, an average of two fronds are shed, and the scars left on the trunk can be used to determine a rough estimate of the plant’s age. [2], The nikau grows up to 15 m tall, with a stout, green trunk which bears grey-green leaf scars. Its ivory spadix, or flower stalk, really does resemble a bony hand and conjures a ghostly resonance with St Kevin himself. “They’re shade for the cattle. 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