Tarata
Common name: Lemonwood
Botanical name: Pittosporum eugenioides
The tarata is a very popular small tree found in gardens and garden centres all over the country, and here in Kaitoke Regional Park you get a chance to see a mature tree in the prime of life.
Tarata can grow up to 12m tall with a trunk up to 60cm in diameter. It is the largest of the New Zealand Pittosporum species. It ranges throughout New Zealand in clearings, along forest margins and stream banks and from sea level to 760 metres.
Young trees grow in a compact conical form for many years, with branches all the way up the trunk from close to ground level, but once the tree matures it changes to a broad spreading tree, with few or no branches low on the trunk, like the one at GZ.
Conical form of tarata at the entrance to Rivendell
Leaves
The common name, lemonwood, comes from the fact that when crushed its leaves have a noticeable lemon-like smell. They are visually quite distinctive: on young trees they are a lighter colour than those of most other trees in the forest, with yellow-green glossy leaves that have wavy margins.
Young foliage showing yellow-green tones
On older trees the colour is a darker green, paler underneath. Regardless of the tree's age, the leaves have a cream coloured midrib and are 10-15cm long and 2-4cm wide.
A tarata leaf, upper surface
Flowers and Fruit
Tarata flowers are a pale yellow and borne in profusion in the spring (from October to December) in large clusters at the ends of the twigs. Flowers are 1-1.5cm across. They exude a strong sweet honey-like scent and a tarata in flower can be smelled from quite a distance away and can be overpowering up close.
Flower photo will follow once I get the chance to take one in the spring
The fruits are small and green, shaped like tiny lemons, and ripen to dark coloured capsules over the space of 12-14 months.
Unripe fruits
Ripe fruits
Bark
In younger trees and on young growth on old trees the bark is pale grey and knobbly: you can see this clearly on some of the new growths that are coming out of the lowest branch on the tarata at GZ.
Young tarata bark
Once the tree ages the bark alters to a more textured surface and a slightly darker grey.
Bark on a mature tree
The tarata at GZ
A mature specimen
The cache
The cache is a red M&M container and at time of placement contained a log sheet, a pencil and an elephant hand stamp. Please make sure you rehide it carefully after signing the log. Online logs that do not have a matching signature in the paper log will be deleted.