What is the oldest tree in Auckland?
The oldest tree on this Auckland list is the Monte Cecilia Fig, a Moreton Bay fig in Monte Cecilia Park, Hillsborough, estimated at about 176 years, in a band of 170 to 180, from a planting date of around 1850. The New Zealand Tree Register calls it the country's largest Moreton Bay fig, with a girth of 1594 centimetres measured across three merged trunks and a crown spreading 51.7 metres on average.
The Monte Cecilia Fig has had two very different lives. For most of its life it grew behind the boundary of a private estate, first Pah Farm under owner James Williamson, known locally as Williamson's Castle, later the Pah Homestead grounds, and it only became public when Auckland Council bought the land in 2004. A tree planted around 1850 has only been open to visitors for the last twenty years of it. Nobody has a documented planting date more precise than "around 1850," and no source gives it a proper name beyond a description of where it stands; several other large Moreton Bay figs share the park with it, planted in the same era. Its size is not in question: the New Zealand Tree Register calls it the country's largest Moreton Bay fig by girth, though that figure is taken across three trunks that have grown together rather than one clean stem. Devonport's Old Albert, the second fig on this list, is younger by more than thirty years and an eight minute walk from the ferry.
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