Kauri gum forms when resin from kauri trees leaks out through fractures or cracks in the bark, hardening upon exposure to air. Lumps commonly fall to the ground and can be covered with soil and forest litter, eventually fossilising. Other lumps form as branches forked or trees are damaged, releasing the resin. [5]

Kauri Gum is the fossilised resin or sap of the Kauri Tree. These enormous trees produce vast amounts of sap which congeal into lumps when the tree is injured. The sap hardens into a resin and becomes a form of Copal. Kauri Gum comes in many shades and colours, from almost completely clear up to almost black.

Kauri gum is a resin (a sticky substance) produced by New Zealand’s giant kauri trees. The resin helps protect the tree by filling in holes and damaged areas. Kauri trees can live for more than 1,000 years, so they make a lot of gum over a lifetime.

Kauri Gum is the fossilised resin or sap of the Kauri Tree. The age of the gum can vary significantly – anywhere from a few hundred years old to many hundreds of thousands of years old. Some Kauri Gum found in the Otago in the South Island has been estimated by scientists to be over 175 million years old and is actually Amber.

Globs of golden gum were left in the soils and swamps of Northland by giant kauri trees over thousands of years. From the 19th century kauri gum became a major export, and hopeful prospectors flocked to the gumfields, but digging gum was a tough way to make a living.

They chewed fresh gum from trees, and softened older gum for chewing by soaking it in water and mixing it with the milk of pūwhā (common sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus). As gum burns readily, it was used to start fires or bound in flax to make a torch for night-time fishing.

Discover GumDiggers Park - an authentic Kauri gum-digging site and buried Kauri forest attraction located north of Kaitaia New Zealand.

In hilly country a digger could often tell from the contours of the land where a kauri tree had fallen, and by finding where the head of the tree was, could usually find gum. As the price rose, surface gum rapidly disappeared and the gum-seeker was forced to look underground.

Lumps can form over many hundreds of years of a kauri tree’s life, and once hardened and eventually fossilizing, become the gum we see today. Kauri gum is Aotearoa New Zealand’s version of amber, although typically not as old as true amber.

2022年12月15日 · Kauri gum was used to make varnishes and other resin-based products. The gum was obtained through digging, fossicking in treetops, or even by bleeding live trees.