Up close and personal - a Kahikatea mast

Kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides) is masting this year.  A mast is a season of major flowering or seeding in a species.

Kahikatea is a gymnosperm (conifer) so actually it does not have either flowers or fruit, technically, even though the fleshy part of a Kahikatea seed looks and tastes like a fruit.  The "fruit" is called an aril but it's just easier to call it fruit!  And it sure tastes nice.

If you look at the aril closely, it has a reddish fleshy part and the seed sits on top.  It has a "foot" and "seed".  In Latin the word to describe this is Podocarp, which means literally "foot seed".

These are seriously delicious, the "foot" is super sweet and tasty but the blue seed tastes pretty much exactly like a juniper berry.  Unless you like eating raw juniper berries, eat the red fleshy bit only!

Kahikatea "fruit" is highly prized and is called koroī.

Get out and taste some while the going is good, and before the birds and rats work it out.  The mast is starting up in the Oparara but is immature still, once it starts in a week or two there will be birds EVERYWHERE up there  :)

For more info see Dacrycarpus dacrydioides | Karamea.nz