Photo: William Ray/RNZ
The mud slips below my boots as I slide down the slope. I grab a root to keep myself from tumbling down the steep, bush-clad gully.
Ahead of me, a small crew of seasoned ecologists and kaitiaki have their heads down, shaping rolls of wire mesh into a cage around a fallen ponga.
They are on a mission - trying to save a bizarre parasite thought to have gone extinct in the Wellington region more than a hundred years earlier: Te pua o Te Rēinga - "the flower of the underworld".
But this parasite has a vital role to play - it's a "tree on tap" - a way for native animals to draw sustenance right at a time and place when they need it most.
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Te pua o Te Rēinga, Dactylanthus taylorii, lives entirely underground, with no leaves or chlorophyll to photosynthesise, instead it draw nutrients from the roots of a host tree. The plant only reveals itself briefly in the Autumn when its knobbly tubers push clusters of pink and purple flowers up through the leaf litter, providing a feast of nectar for native creatures, including its main pollinator, t
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