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Pectinopitys ferruginea
Also called Brown Pine
Miro (Pectinopitys ferruginea) is a New Zealand native evergreen conifer tree, up to about 25 m tall, in the podocarp family, and is rarely grown outside its native range. Its key trait for care is that it is a long-lived forest tree that grows in shade and needs a large space.
Pectinopitys ferruginea, commonly known as miro and brown pine, is a species of tree in the family Podocarpaceae. It is a dioecious evergreen conifer, reaching heights of up to 25 metres (80 feet), with a trunk up to 1–1.5 metres (3–5 ft) in diameter. It is endemic to New Zealand; its range mainly covers the North, South, and Stewart Islands, typically inhabiting lowland to montane forests. Its leaves are dark-green to bronze-green in colour, and are pectinate, meaning they are arranged closely together, similar to a comb. The berry-like cones of P. ferruginea are red to pinkish-red in colour and are up to 20 mm long. P. ferruginea has an estimated lifespan of 250–350 years, although it may live as long as 770 years.
P. ferrugina was first described by the British botanist Aylmer Bourke Lambert in 1832.
Pectinopitys ferruginea cones are an important food source for numerous New Zealand native birds, and they are an especially important food source for the kererū (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae). A 1992 study observed that a single kererū could consume 100 fruits a day, and a single kererū could consume about 10,000 fruits each fruiting season. A single kererū could disperse P. ferruginea seeds up to 10–30 m (30–100 ft) away from a host tree, and in rare cases could be over 1 km (0.6 mi) from a host tree. The kākā (Nestor meridionalis) have been recorded destroying the seeds of P. ferruginea and mataī (Prumnopitys taxifolia). A 1989 study, published in the New Zealand Journal of Ecology, recorded: blackbirds (Turdus merula), brown kiwi (Apteryx australis), kōkako (Callaeas wilsoni), and weka (Gallirallus australis), as dispersers of the fruits of P. ferruginea. A 2021 study hypothesised P.
Although P. ferruginea had a use as a timber, it was historically considered inferior to mataī (Prumnopitys taxifolia) and tōtara (Podocarpus totara). P. ferruginea wood was used to construct houses, beams, furniture, flooring, and weatherboards. It was often used as a substitution for mataī (Prumnopitys taxifolia). The British missionary, Richard Taylor, described the fruit as "like a plum of a spicy flavour", and an infusion of the bark was used to treat stomach aches. Māori would historically set up "pigeon traps" near P. ferruginea trees to capture kererū. European hunters also learned that kererū are often found feeding on the fruits of the tree, as such, they would often camp near the trees, waiting to capture kererū with their firearms.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pectinopitys ferruginea 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.
