Yard Thread

show us your trees

In the front of the property, we have:


The large shaggy sort of trees are manuka, named tea-tree by Captain Cook (who used its leaves and bark to make a tea that would fight scurvy on ships.) They're quite valuable from a conservation standpoint because they're the first trees to colonise new and exposed ground and forming a "nursery" in their understory for other trees.

There's also a steady overseas+tourist market for the honey gathered from bees that forage on it as a "superfood" or health supplement.

The spiky ones are cabbage trees. They're a hashtag iconic New Zealand plant. The small-leaved customer in the front is probably a beech? Let me get back to you on that'n


In the front yard, we've got a pittosporum (probably Pittosporum tenuifolum, aka kohuhu) in the back in the Vege Zone, and a plant of unknown disposition in the rockery. It's got cool zig-zaggy branches and soft leaves and I'm probably gonna have to ask my dad when he gets home. Blah.



A pple tree. Espaliered against the fence for space considerations and also to make it easier to pick the fruit. Next to it is the worm bin in black, and the compost bin below.


Moving into the backyard, we've got two camellias (underneath is a popular chicken-foraging spot), a japanese maple that my cat got stuck in, and big ol' azalea. In the back you can see a mature cabbage tree (on the neighbor's property).


Finally, backing onto our property are the neighbor's trees, which drop enough fuckening leaves and seed that they count in my tour. The yellow-green big fellow in the back is an elm, with all the annoying papery seeds that entails. The foreground broadleaf is a mystery for the fuckening ages (at least until I go and get some more Plant ID books from my library).