Auckland's most remarkable trees are not native. Two Moreton Bay figs, the larger of them the biggest of its species in New Zealand, a champion Algerian oak with its roots fenced off from foot traffic, and a pair of English oaks planted for two coronations eight years apart: all imported, all more than a century old. They stand in four separate corners of the city, a harbour crossing to Devonport, a school lawn in Takapuna, parks in Hillsborough and Epsom, so treat this as a city of destinations rather than one walk.
0 of 5 visited in Auckland
1
Old Albert
Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla) · about 143 years · Devonport
Old Albert is twice as wide as it is tall. The crown of this Moreton Bay Fig averages 42 metres across, on readings of 44 by 40, over a tree standing 21.5 metres high. It went into Windsor Reserve in 1883, grown from a seedling raised by way of Albert Park in the city centre across the harbour, which is where the name comes from. That puts it at about 143 years old, in a band the register gives as 140 to 145.
The form is unusual for the species. Three stems rather than one trunk, a curtain of aerial roots, and almost none of the heavy buttressing Moreton Bay figs are known for elsewhere. Devonport calls it an Australian banyan, and standing under the canopy you can see why. The girth is 1087 centimetres at a metre up, measured with the aerial roots left out, which is the honest way to do it on a tree like this.
It has spent its whole life at the point where Devonport meets the water, a few minutes from the wharf, and the town has grown up around it rather than the other way round. Auckland Council carries it as a registered notable tree and arborists maintain it on that basis; the last field observation on the register found it present and in good health.
The ferry from downtown lands eight minutes' walk away. Few trees this size are this easy to reach.
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2
Edward VII Coronation Tree
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · about 124 years · Takapuna
The two records of this oak cannot agree on the day it was planted, and they are a week apart. The plaque quoted by Takapuna Primary School dates it to 2 August 1902, the coronation of Edward VII. Auckland Council's notable tree schedule, through Wikidata, gives the planting as 9 August 1902. Nobody has reconciled the two, and either way the tree is about 124 years old, in a band of 122 to 126.
It is the elder of a pair. Eight years later a second Pedunculate Oak went in a few metres along the same frontage for the coronation of George V, and both are still there. The school puts it plainly in its own history: the oaks were planted at the front of the school, they survive today, over a hundred years later, and each carries its own plaque.
In 1923 the War Memorial Gates were raised beside them and unveiled by the Governor-General, Viscount Jellicoe. So this oak has grown up inside a small piece of civic memory, two coronations and a war marked out on one strip of lawn, with a primary school going past it twice a day.
See it from the footpath. Both oaks read clearly from Anzac Street, at or very near the boundary. The front lawn is school ground and we cannot promise it is open, so plan on looking rather than walking up to the trunk.
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3
George V Coronation Tree
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · about 116 years · Takapuna
A primary school in Takapuna is on Auckland Council's historic heritage schedule because of two oak trees on its front lawn. This is the younger one, planted in 1910 for the coronation of George V, eight years after the school had already done the same thing for Edward VII a few metres away. It is about 116 years old, in a band of 114 to 118.
Both trees are Pedunculate Oaks, the English species, put in the ground on the other side of the world as an act of loyalty to a king most of the people planting them would never see. Both carry a plaque. Both are still standing, which the school confirms in its own history, and Auckland Council lists them twice over, once as notable trees and once as heritage.
Thirteen years after this oak went in, the War Memorial Gates were raised alongside it and unveiled by the Governor-General, Viscount Jellicoe. Coronation, coronation, war: three moments a town wanted marked, all within a few metres of pavement, and the oaks are the only part of it still growing.
A note on getting close. The tree stands at the school's Anzac Street frontage and is easy to see from the public footpath. The lawn itself is school ground and we have no confirmation the public may cross it, so this is one to look at from the street.
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4
The Monte Cecilia Fig
Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla) · about 176 years · Hillsborough
The largest Moreton Bay fig in New Zealand throws a crown wider than it is tall, by twenty metres. The register measures the spread at 51.7 metres on average, readings of 55.4 by 48, over a tree 30 metres high. Its girth is recorded as 1594 centimetres, taken at the narrowest waist of the bole, and that figure needs reading carefully: this is a three-trunked tree, so the tape goes around several merged stems rather than one clean column.
It was planted around 1850, which makes it roughly 176 years old, in a band of 170 to 180. The ground it stands on was then Pah Farm, the estate of James Williamson, known around Auckland as Williamson's Castle, and the designed landscape around it was laid out under head gardener John Blackmoore. For the next century and a half the fig grew behind a private boundary. Auckland Council bought the estate in 2004, so a tree that has stood here since the 1850s has only been open to everybody for its last twenty years.
It is not alone. Monte Cecilia Park holds several old Moreton Bay figs, and the council's own account calls many of them the oldest of their species in the country.
One caveat on the numbers. A second source puts the height nearer 27 metres against the register's 30, and nobody has been up with a rangefinder to settle it.
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5
The Cornwall Park Algerian Oak
Algerian Oak (Quercus canariensis) · about 106 years · Epsom / One Tree Hill
There is a fence around this oak, and it is not there to keep you off the tree. It is there to keep feet off the roots. Cornwall Park has closed the root zone and let the canopy come down to ground level, so New Zealand's national champion Algerian Oak stands inside a skirt of its own branches, 27.2 metres high with a crown averaging just under 40 metres across.
The register scores it 378 on the champion tree scale and rates it among the largest of its species anywhere in the world. The trunk measures 650 centimetres round at 1.15 metres, taken below the branch flare, and it is a single stem rather than a cluster of merged trunks, which is part of why the park calls it one of the best-formed Algerian oaks in the country.
Nobody wrote down the day it went in. Cornwall Park puts the planting in the early 1920s, by park staff under Sir James Gunson, then chairman of the park board, which makes it about 106 years old, somewhere between 100 and 110. If you know the exact date, tell us.
Someone looked at it in February 2026 and recorded a good full canopy with some leafminer damage. That is the kind of note a tree gets when people are watching it. The park is free, open at all hours, four kilometres from the middle of the city.
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