AA Trees in New Zealand by Julian Matthews

Description

Trees play a vital role in all our lives, yet we are so accustomed to their presence that all too often we are blind to their beauty and ignorant of the ways in which they benefit mankind. The story of trees in NZ is interwoven with the sagas of the earliest settlers, firstly from Polynesia, then in more recent times of European origin.

To the Maori people the trees were life itself, their survival as a race dependent on the forests.  To the majority of European settlers the trees were something to be destroyed if they occupied land of agricultural potential, or if they were valuable timber trees such as the kauri, they were to be felled with more care, but destroyed nonetheless.

As NZ progresses through its second century of European settlement, it is at last developing a feeling of national identity.  Coupled with this has been an upsuge of interest in our native flora, in particular out trees. New Zealanders  have been slow to realise the unique asset they possess in their native forests.  Far too often prodounced dull and lacking in colourful flowering trees, the NZ forests are at last becoming appreciated for their subtle beauty; and who could deny that in the kowhai, rata and pohutukawa we are blessed with some of the outstanding flowering trees of the world.

But the story of trees in NZ includes far more than just our native trees.  it is of the pioneer men and women who endeavoured to recreate the landscape that had been so familiar to them in England, Scotland, or whereever, by planting trees typical of their homeland.  It is also the story of trees in our towns and cities, and the effect trees can have on our lives in areas of dense population.  Trees in New Zealand is a worthy addition to the very successful library of AA titles, each of which focuses on a particular aspect of NZ’s ‘great outdoors’ , and contributes to the understanding and the enjoyment of what that ‘great outdoors’ has to offer us all.

176 pages

Please note this is a second hand book in good used condition.