One of New Zealand's best known trees, Kanuka can be found growing throughout New Zealand in scrub and forest.

Kanuka flowers have a musty, heady scent and smother the tree like a white blanket through summer. They are smaller than the similar manuka, and carried in greater abundance.

Kanuka is also taller than manuka, growing to 10m+. It is a tough coloniser of poor soils and tolerates harsh conditions; excellent for native revegetation projects or shelter planting.

The tree's scientific name is Kunzea ericoides (ericoides = resembling heather). Prior to being allocated a separate genus, kanuka was previously known as Leptospermum ericoides.

 

Kanuka flowers

Kunzea ericoides, wind-blasted on the Otago Peninsula, Dunedin

In more sheltered locations Kanuka forms an attractive canopy tree.

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