In the 8 months that I've been walking the trails of the Waitakere Ranges near Auckland I've never knowingly managed to find any Cyathea cunninghamii - until now. On a late afternoon walk through one of the more densely bushy, dark and humid walks in the park, purely by chance I looked up and through a small gap in the canopy I spotted the unmistakable brown scales and thin trunk of this very elusive species.
It's trunk was about 9 metres (30 feet) tall and leant steeply away from the bank on which it was growing and up towards the sun. This species really does grow in habitat which makes it difficult to spot from the ground. The forest here is packed full of Dicksonia squarrosa and Cyathea dealbata and the cunninghamii towers above them. I was so lucky to have spotted it through the gap.
Following the trunk down I saw that it had grown right up against a group of squarrosa trunks. Look carefully and you can see it in the centre of this image to the left.
Just to give you an idea of how thin the trunk is, this image to the right is me holding the thickest section of it! It narrowed to around only 60mm (2.1/2") at its thinnest point.
Luckily I had my zoom lens on me so snapped it on and took this close-up of the trunk. You can clearly see the distinctive brown scales. The stipes are much shorter than those of medullaris and having now seen them both in habitat I can see that the fronds of cunninghamii also diifer in that they turn up at the ends. A subtle yet clear distinction.
