Pohutukawa
Metrosideros excelsa
A coastal tree at heart, and a big one — twenty meters tall by fifteen across where it is happy.
- Type
- Tree · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Silver and gray
- Flower color
- Red
- Sunlight
- Full sun, on the coast or in a sheltered position inland.
- Watering
- Regular water while young; dry spells stop troubling it later.
- Feeding
- Compost mulch in spring; actual feeding is rarely called for.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Shape it lightly while young and barely touch it after that.
- Mar–Jun Bud Break
- Jun–Oct Flowering
- Oct–Dec Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 49 ft 3 in
- In-row spacing
- 49 ft 3 in
- Between rows
- 61 ft 6 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow, wide and opportunistic
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3.5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 148–197 ft across, about 3–4× the width of the plant
These roots go looking, and what they find is drains, soakaways, footings, paving and the border next door. Give it real distance from anything you would mind being lifted or blocked: the reach below ground is several times what the crown suggests.
It drops curtains of aerial roots from the branches and grips whatever it lands on, and the ground roots lift walls and paths. Splendid on a cliff, hard work in a courtyard.
The habit is Pohutukawa’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Trees, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com