"Site 5" Pöporo, Poroporo - Solanum aviculare

Here, nestled between two olive trees, is one of many plants of the poroporo tree, with its beautiful flowers and attractive foliage contrasting with the more sedate green foliage and inconspicuous flowers of many of its neighbours. This is our official representative of the Proto Central Pacific stage, and it and others of this species have been enthusiastically distributed through the garden by birds feasting on the berries. (Don't try to emulate the dietry habits of the avian gourmets before you read the cautionary notes on the Poroporo page [link opposite] -- the berries are poisonous when they are not fully ripe.)

From here, if you're in a hurry, you can carry on the way you came and go straight to the Proto Western Fijian / Polynesian stage, about 30 metres and a hundred years or less from where you're standing -- just turn left at the corner pictured at the bottom of the right hand column and start walking up the hill -- press the corresponding link at the bottom of this one to get there effortlessly. But we'd recommend that you take one of the alternative routes outlined below and visit Site 5B near the river before you leave this part of the garden.

The recommended route is via the lookout over the river in the northwest corner. The simplest way to get there is to walk back the way to got to the poroporo, turn left at the end, and follow the pathway to the bunyabunya and cypress.However, there are a lot of alternative routes -- just keep that columnular cypress (right of centre on the skyline below) as your landmark. Once you get to the river, follow the directions in the column opposite.

Another way is to go down the path more or less opposite where you're standing to the edge of the borrow pit, pictured below. (Borrow pits are places where up to the 18th and early 19th Century Mäori horticulturalists mined topsoil and volcanic sand and transferred it to other sites nearby where they had established their kumara gardens. There are a lot of them in this part of the Waikato.)

If you take the right fork around the borrow pit you can link up with a path on the eastern side of the pä harakeke which will take you to the path leading to the river lookout, or another (through the gap between the clumps) around the side of another borrow pit to the area near the gate pictured opposite.

Or, or you can get to the path along the southern boundary by taking a left fork.

That would lead you first to the same path which goes to the east of the pä harakeke further along to the south.

And if you are feeling very tired, but still want to do most of the tour, you can head diagonally across via the orchard and almost certainly through some long grass to the southwest corner, just beyond the stone pine (below, left). This really is a short cut -- about 35 metres; all the other routes are about 100 metres.

And in the corner, you'll be at location 5b -- third picture from bottom in the right-hand column.

From there, however you got there, follow the directions to put you on the path to Stage 6, and then press the appropriate link below.

(This photo was taken at the end of October 2009, when the river was partly in flood -- the vegetation you can see in the water is normally on dry land, and there is a beach below that again.) From here, follow the fence line along past the gate.

And past the Queensland Kauri (Agathis robusta); this lost its still tender growing tip in a storm last year, but no doubt will provide itself with another.

And along through a grove of trees to the corner.

Look towards the river, and you will see the 5B poroporo.