Tree Stuff Blog
Mahoe, the Fast Growing Native Tree - by Ben Gaia, www.dialatree.co.nz


www.dialatree.co.nz

Mahoe or whiteywood is a quick growing coloniser of open spaces and windthrow, especially in wetter areas and near the sea. It tolerates very harsh coastal conditions and quite a bit of frost, sometimes going semi deciduous until spring. Its purple berries - Mahoe is the Maori word for purple - feed the birds and the bush spreads into new areas helping establish native bush when required. Horses and cattle (and deer) love to eat it - but it is vigorous enough to recover especially if it is already 2 metres tall. It only takes a couple of years to reach two metres with ideal conditions.


We grow mahoe in tubes and tube trays for shelter planting and revegetation.

Ever since starting a tree nursery in the nineties, farmers and lifestylers always asked me for some evergreen, preferably native shelter tree, that grows fast to about 4 metres then stops. This magic tree seemed like an idle dream, until I tried growing mahoe for shade trees. Instead of building shadehouse structures in my organic bush nursery, with our ample rain the wee bushes grew to garden umbrella size, enough to shade the surrounding plant pots, in three years from a tube grown plant. Coprosma propinqua also performed just as admirably. Above two metres tall, you can trim them; or the wind will trim them if you are by the beach; or let them go and in a sheltered spot the tree will fill a wee glade with perfume and birdsong.


A thirty year old mahoe big enough to shelter a whole tree nursery

You can add "Multipurpose" to "Fast". Mahoe, the Fast Growing Multipurpose Native Tree. Having hacked down Mahoes of all ages and sizes, I relish meeting them with the chainsaw blade. Every cut means half an hour of a warm house and hot water. In mythology it is one of the two main sources of fire along with Totara. Birds have spread it through my forest over thirty years and all sizes will go onto the firewood stack cut to length, as they dry fast like willow. Big ones also split easily for drying. An ideal medium heat firewood log is an "old-man" log of twenty year old mahoe in the round, with a chunk of old-man gorse next to it for extra heat.

Long thin stems can be harvested, like hazel and hinau, for intermediate fence droppers and posts: two metre straight sticks, like king bamboo. Bonus: they produce wood in the cold and wind of the South Island. You can lop off the side branches and grow scaffolding or washing-line poles in no time flat.

Their best use is as a shelter hedge where native trees are preferred, and not too much height is desired to keep the sun on paddocks. Its particular niche is right by the beach where it naturally thrives in dunes even right down to the marram grass and pingao tufts. In such challenging sites it can transform your garden chances, or your coastal cow paddocks, lifting away heavy salt winds and warming the calm air in its shelter.








We grow fruit and timber trees in the extreme climate of the South Island. Explore our mail order nursery for organic fruit and forestry trees.

Back to dialatree - and tree blog archive - www.dialatree.co.nz