Episode 5
In Episode 5 of The Seed Pod. Taylor shares stories about the fascinating world of carnivorous plants and native trees in Aotearoa. He speaks fondly of the giants of our forests, as well as the smaller alien-like carnivorous plant adaptations, native lizards, student leadership, environmental perfectionism, and teaching.
We are going to dive deeper into one of his stories in this Learning Pod using a Play - Observe - Discover - Share structure.
Observe
Taylor loves the giant native trees of the forest. These trees play important roles in the forest ecosystem, by taking in lots of carbon and in turn releasing oxygen, establishing deep root networks that stabilise the soil, providing habitat and shelter for animals and other plants, and producing great quantities of food.
To celebrate these forest giants, we have created ‘Tree Traits’ identification sheets to help us get to know them from their bark, leaves, and fruit, cones, or seeds. Do you have any local giants?
Printable Tree Trait ID Sheets HERE.
Have a go at identifying and describing different tree traits:
Printable activity sheet HERE.
Discover
Now that we have been introduced to some of the incredible forest giants found here in Aotearoa/New Zealand, we’re going to look at just how big they can be. This time we’ll focus on one tree, the mighty Kahikatea tree. Kahikatea trees can grow up to 8Om in height!
Often it can be difficult to visualise just how big something is… so let’s compare the size of a mighty Kahikatea to some of our native species.
In this activity we’ll be using maths to figure out how many individual native species would fit into 8Om… for example, Rangiora leaves can be up to 25cm long. That means that it would take 320 Rangiora leaves stacked end-to-end to be as tall as a Kahikatea tree! Give it a go:
Share
Share your stories with us at: theseedpod@outlook.com
This is a place for sharing stories and contributions from our community.
Carmel’s Story:
"My 7 year old son loves to garden and get his hands dirty. He has an incredible visual memory which has helped him to identify many different plants and trees not only in our gardens, but also when we go on foraging walks in our local region.”
- Carmel
We hope you enjoyed this Learning Pod!
If you have any feedback or photos/stories/art to share please get in touch!
