For all their showiness, tree ferns are extraordinary survivors. They hold their secrets close—but now, scientists are ...

Feijoas have become a New Zealand emblem. So how did they end up in Aotearoa, and how did we end up adoring them—to the point of obsession, for some—when feijoas have not really caught on anywhere ...

Male and female dusky pipefish look exactly the same in all but one aspect—males have a pouch for incubating eggs when they ...

Whether providing shade for a summer picnic, standing sentinel on a crumbling cliff or splashing Christmas crimson along garden edge, street or shoreline, the pohutukawa is one of the trees New ...

Often, kapa haka teams order their piupiu in batches. This year, a newbie team from the East Cape decided to make their ...

Mowing a blob shape into a field can dramatically help insects, research has found—and it’s better for pollinators than ...

Plantations of exotic timber trees, especially pines, are looked on with disdain by many as alien monocultures, an unpleasant accommodation necessary to protect precious indigenous forests from the ...

In November 2024, on the wind-whipped shores of Ōtūwharekai, the Ashburton Lakes, retired farmer John Evans was checking his ...

Plantation forests take up about seven per cent of New Zealand’s land area, mostly in the North Island. Now, researchers have ...

These are the questions that Jessica Hutchings and Jo Smith raise and answer in Pātaka Kai (which means “pantry”). The term ...

The Cape Reinga-Spirits Bay region of the Far North has great significance for Māori. According to Māori mythology, when the spirits of the dead return to Hawaiki, the homeland of their ancestors, ...

Nineteenth-century photographer John McGarrigle is something of an enigma. A feisty, litigious man who tried his hand at farming, gold speculation and (more than once) the liquor trade, he left few ...