Meetings With Remarkable Trees: Peel Forest

The fact I’m a bit of a tree person has probably slipped out over the past few years… Perhaps not quite in the same league as Dame Judi Dench’s A Passion for Trees but I’ll still go out of my way to meet remarkable trees. (Btw, I’ve borrowed this phrase from Thomas Pakenham’s book of the same name.)

Recently, I went down to Peel Forest, just to the south of Canterbury’s Rangitata river to check out some of the remnant forest giants, specifically totara, kahikatea, and matai—and they were well...