What's happening at Puāwai?

If you have visited Puāwai recently, you may have seen that there have been some major changes to the little corner behind our Toolshed. The originally damp and dilapidated

corner has now been transformed into a bright and inviting seedling trial space. 

Over the last few months, PFK Friday Volunteers at Puāwai have been working away at setting up the shade house for our maire tawake seedling resistance trial. On Friday 26^th of June, we had the “Big Move Day,” in which 122 seedlings were moved to Puāwai, carefully re-potted, and placed into our brand-new shade house to start the resistance trial. The maire tawake seedling resistance trial is part of the wider maire tawake conservation project that PFK has been part of for the last few years, funded by Auckland Council.

The maire tawake conservation project started in 2022 and is largely volunteer run. The project started when Kathy McCormack and Maria Valkova from Friends of Bushglen Reserve saw that their local maire tawake were dying from myrtle rust.

They contacted Dr Robert Beresford (at the time working for Plant & Food Research Institute) who created a population health survey and fungicide spraying regime for the trees. Each year the spray regime is created based on climatic models predicting myrtle rust activity, and is now being used to protect trees in Bayside Drive Reserve, Bushglen Reserve, Cecil Eady (Kauri Glen) Reserve, Centennial Park, Oakley Creek and Karaka.

Bags of maire tawake fruit collected in 2024, held by PFK volunteer Tamilla.

The result of this ongoing protection are the 100+ seedlings that have been raised by Maria Valkova, Helen Rendle and Dr. Beresford; and now call Puāwai their home.

Maire tawake tree with fruit in Cecil Eady (Kauri Glen) Reserve.

Maire tawake are an important species both culturally and ecologically. An important food source in the past, maire tawake berries are extremely high in antioxidants. Additionally, Māori used maire tawake bark as a source of dye.

Ecologically, maire tawake are unique in that they are the only native member of the Syzygium genus, and one of the few native trees that can live in wetlands. Wetlands are biodiversity hotspots and maire tawake add to this by creating structural habitat and food for others, such as the maire tawake moth and kererū/kukupa.

See here for more Māturanga Māori on maire tawake

Interested in keeping up to date with the trial?

Name and sponsor a seedling to get monthly updates on the trial and your seedling.

Click on the link below for more info.

Go to our seedling sponsorship page

The goal of the trial is to identify any individual seedlings that may have natural resistance to myrtle rust. Myrtle rust is a fungal disease that arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2017 and has spread throughout the country since. Myrtle rust's airborne nature and the popularity of lilly-pilly “super-spreader” hedges, has meant that myrtle rust quickly spread through the country. Super-spreaders like lilly-pilly, quickly increase the sporeload (amount of spores in the environment) through growing rapidly and surviving infection each season.

We have a range of native myrtles, including pōhutukawa, rātā and ramarama. Unfortunately, compared to most native myrtles, maire tawake are incredibly susceptible and already rare due to habitat loss. The key way to help our native myrtles is to reduce the myrtle rust sporeload. For more information on how to do this, see our myrtle rust page.

We will be posting updates of our seedling trial on our PFK social media, but if you would like regular updates and the opportunity to name one of the seedlings, you can sponsor a seedling here.

Shanti, Kathy and Helen, with the freshly re-potted maire tawake seedlings, ready to go into the seedling resistance trial.