Phyllocladus toatoa
Sponsor
Kindly sponsored by
members of the RHS Woody Expert Group
in memory of Seamus O'Brien (1970-2025).
Credits
Tom Christian (2026)
Recommended citation
Christian, T. (2026), 'Phyllocladus toatoa' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Small trees to 15 m tall, to 60 cm dbh. True leaves on seedlings 5–10 mm long, 0.5–0.7 mm wide, often interspersed with juvenile, deeply pinnatifid 3–5 cm long phylloclades; at base of phylloclades and on their margins filiform leaves appear in young plants, 2–5 mm long, deciduous. Phylloclades pinnately compound, pinnate segments bifacially flattened, leaf-like, 1.5–6 × 1–4 cm, rhombic to obovate-flabellate, margins entire to deeply dissected (laciniate in seedlings). Flushing phylloclades copper-coloured, then bright green, sometimes glaucous, oldest sometimes with a bronze hue. Pollen cones borne at base of a new shoot or from terminal bud in pseudo-whorls of 15–20 cones, each on a 10–25 mm long stout peduncle subtended by a spathulate bract, pollen cones cylindrical, 10–25 × 3–4 mm, greenish or lemon-yellow at first, ripening yellow. Seed cones 4–8(–10) alternately on both sides of the long petiolate base of fertile phylloclades, short-stalked, subtended by a single ligulate bract. Seed cones comprise 10–20 spirally arranged imbricate bracts turning from green to purple and swelling at maturity. Seeds 1 per fertile bract, 8–20 per cone, each in a whitish aril covering the lower half of the seed, 3–4 mm long, semi-ovoid (laterally flattened) purplish ripening blackish-brown. (Farjon 2017; de Lange 2026).
Distribution New Zealand North Island
Habitat In lowland tropical to warm temperate forest up to c. 600 m asl, including in Agathis australis forest where it is typically restricted to poorer soils. Across much of its range the habitat has been highly modified by logging; as a secondary-succession, sub-canopy species, Phyllocladus toatoa often regenerates abundantly in forests that have had their larger trees logged.
USDA Hardiness Zone 9
RHS Hardiness Rating H3
Conservation status Least concern (LC)
For those who know it this is perhaps the most handsome of the Phyllocladus, though it is seldom cultivated beyond its native New Zealand. Like the others it is not at all clear when it was introduced to cultivation in the northern hemisphere. Adolphus Kent presumably includes this species when he states ‘The New Zealand species are occasionally seen in cultivation in a young state in European Botanic Gardens’ (Kent 1900) so a mid-to-late 19th century introduction, like so many other prominent New Zealand plants, seems as good a guess as any. Certainly it arrived before 1881, when it was recorded from Kew’s temperate house (Bean 1976).
In the 1960s the British dendrologist Alan Mitchell only knew of a single example, growing on Garinish Island in the far southwest of Ireland; it measured 5.8 m tall × 8 cm dbh in 1966 (Mitchell 1972). A little while later another was discovered at Mount Stewart, Co. Down, at the opposite end of the island of Ireland, 7 m tall in 1976 (Clarke 1988). Presumably the same Garinish Island plant reached 11 m × 25 cm by the time it was last measured in 2000; notable extant UK trees include one at Nymans, 7.2 m × 13 cm in 2025, and one in Borde Hill’s famous Gores Wood, 7.5 m × 11 cm also in 2025 (The Tree Register 2026). (Incidentally the original tree in Gores Wood was planted in 1915, but was evidently unknown to Mitchell. A cutting from it is growing well in the garden at Sarum, Surrey, where it is now 2.3 m tall and seemingly coping well with a succession of warm summers, albeit with irrigation – R. White, pers. comm. 2026).
Only a single and rather suspect record of its cultivation in North America was traced during the preparation of this account, but Phyllocladus toatoa is considered interesting and attractive enough to still be frequently planted in New Zealand gardens (pers. obs.). Indeed, in 2009 it was the official gift of the International Dendrology Society to Margaret Barker of Larnach Castle, Dunedin, following a visit there during the tour of New Zealand (M. Barker, pers. comm. 2023).
It is, for all its rarity, rather distinctive, having comfortably the largest ‘leaves’ of temperate members of the genus. When these are young they tend to be rather glaucous, at least in areas with intense summer sun such as its native New Zealand, but plants in Britain seem to require such a sheltered spot in order to thrive that this sunscreen is quickly lost (pers. obs.).
