Wellington's oldest and tallest tree stands in a native forest reserve because an architect once went to court to stop it being felled. Moko is a rimu, about 800 years old, 27.3 metres tall, named by local iwi in a 2021 Matariki ceremony and a 2024 finalist for the country's Tree of the Year. A protective platform now stands over its roots, reached by a 20 to 30 minute track from the park's picnic lawn.
0 / 1 visitadas em Otari-Wilton's Bush
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Moko
Rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) · about 800 years · Wilton, Wellington
Wellington's oldest tree survived because an architect went to court for it. Decades before Otari-Wilton's Bush became the protected forest reserve it is today, Bob Fantl, a Bauhaus-trained architect and early environmentalist, fought to stop this rimu being felled, and the reason it still stands over Wilton Road is that he won.
It is a rimu rather than a kauri and carries none of a kauri's bulk: a trunk measured at 177.6 centimetres across in 2010, a height of 27.3 metres, its bark hung with epiphytes and perching lilies the way old-growth rimu usually are. Its age, repeated everywhere as about 800 years, is old enough that locals had already taken to calling it Wellington's oldest and tallest tree long before it had a name of its own.
It got one in July 2021, when local iwi gifted it the name Moko in a Matariki ceremony. In 2024 it was named a finalist for the country's Tree of the Year, decades after a single court case was the only thing standing between it and a saw.
A protective viewing platform now stands over its roots, reached by a 20 to 30 minute track from the Troup Picnic Lawn, rebuilt as a gentler zig-zag route in 2022 so the climb there does not itself become more foot traffic over the ground the tree needs.
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