Pohutukawa Trees

Every year around Christmas in Wellington the Pohutukawa trees bloom. They are sometimes called "Christmas-Tree Trees” for reasons that will be pretty obvious when you look at the pictures. They are coming into spectacular bloom right now, however. They are late. The reason for this is that summer has been quite slow in bringing on the heat the pushes the blooms out (and in fact we are still waiting for the summer weather to set in for real-- still). In any case, they will remind North Americans of the bottle brush trees. But they can grow much bigger and they come in all sizes. They are all over town! Here are some pictures of them. Enjoy: