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Dactylanthus taylorii
Also called Hades Flower, Dactylanthus
Wood rose is a leafless, fully parasitic plant endemic to New Zealand's North Island that lives entirely underground on the roots of native trees and shrubs, so it cannot be grown like a typical garden plant. Its key requirement is a suitable native host tree and damp, well-drained forest soil, and it is protected because wild populations are rare.
Dactylanthus taylorii, commonly known in English as wood rose and in Māori as te pua o te rēinga ("flower of the underworld"), is a fully parasitic flowering plant, the only one endemic to New Zealand. The host tree responds to the presence of Dactylanthus by forming a burl-like structure that resembles a fluted wooden rose (hence the common name). When the flowers emerge on the forest floor, they are pollinated by a ground-foraging species of native bat.
Dactylanthus is currently found only in the North Island, although there is evidence from fossil pollen it lived recently in the northern South Island. It ranges from Puketi Forest in Northland through the Coromandel Peninsula as far south as Mt Bruce, and from Mt Taranaki to Te Araroa on the East Coast. In 2025 a remnant population was discovered near Wainuiomata, the first time the species had been observed in the wild in the Wellington region since 1914. It also lives on Little Barrier Island. The plant is cryptic and hence hard to survey. Many sites likely are known only to collectors, as the woody growth has commercial value. In 2020 plants from Pureora Forest were transplanted to Zealandia and Otari-Wilton's Bush reserves in Wellington. Ngā Manu Nature Reserve in Waikanae has two established, flowering sites as well as two sites added in 2021.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dactylanthus taylorii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
