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Philip Garnock-Jones, Emeritus Professor of Botany, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Most of NZ’s flowering plants grow nowhere else – and Christmas falls in peak blooming season

Philip Garnock-Jones/Auckland University Press, CC BY-NC-ND

Traditionally, the plants associated with Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere – holly, ivy, mistletoe – are celebrated for their evergreen leaves in winter or their fruits.

But in the Southern Hemisphere, Christmas falls in peak flowering season, a time of rebirth and reproduction more akin to the northern Easter.

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