The Celery Pine of Fota

This conifer has no true leaves. What looks like foliage is flattened stem tissue, called a cladode, doing photosynthesis in place of leaves the plant never bothers to grow, and in this species the cladodes are notched and lobed enough to look uncannily like celery leaves, which is where the English name comes from. The Maori name, tanekaha, belongs to the same tree in its native New Zealand, where its reddish bark was once stripped for a red-brown dye and its timber prized for being straight-grained and durable. The national heritage tree survey classes it, fairly, among the estate's arboricultural curiosities, and bands its age to 50 to 100 years. It is one of the odder choices in a collection the Smith-Barry family built across three generations from the 1820s onward, expressly to grow plants nothing else in Ireland could support, and a New Zealand conifer that photosynthesises without leaves fits that brief exactly. The register is the only source describing this specimen. If you know more about it, tell us.