The lovely Rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) is one of our New Zealand Podocarps and as such is allied to the pines spruces and firs of other countries.

But this sketch shows how very different our native forests are from pine forests overseas.     Even where our natural forests contain native podocarps, they have a very different structure with much more variety of tree types, broadleaf and podocarps combining together to make a very varied forest, and this is one of the joys of our bush.