NZ Amber

This lump of New Zealand Kauri Gum, given to us by my husband's grandmother several years ago, weighs 1200gms.

About Kauri Gum
Kauri Gum is the resin of New Zealand's majestic Kauri Trees - it is sometimes known as New Zealand Amber.

It begins its journey as the life blood of the tree, the soft sap oozes out of cracks and breaks in the trunk and dries in the air. On the giant trees these golden lumps can sometimes be up to several kilograms in weight.

Traditionally the Maori used the soft, fresh Gum as a chewing gum. They also used lumps of it as a torch as it burns long and well with a pleasant scent and they used the blackened, burned gum as part of an ink for Moko (tattooing).

In the 1800's Kauri Gum was exported to England as a base for wood varnish, this led to people seeking and digging up hundreds of tons of Gum from swamps and hillsides. They were known as the Gumdiggers. New Zealand (Aotearoa) was once covered in huge Kauri forests until the Maori and then European settlers burnt down and deforested most of the ancient forests, only a small percentage of our original Kauri forest remains.

These days Kauri gum is used as jewellery.



PS. Thank you once again everyone, yesterday's Blip made it to the Spotlight. Quite a thrill as this is my second image to make it this far in two days.