It has been five or six years since the last big show, and this year entire hillsides are resplendent in crimson, from Haast, up the glacier valleys, up Otira Gorge, up the Coast Rd and throughout northern Buller.
Rata first flowers on north-facing slopes and lower valleys where it is warmer, and as the warm summer takes hold on the Coast the colourful show is now spreading into the higher slopes.
The Department of Conservation said it had been a pretty remarkable blooming.
"The rata is flowering in a big way right through Buller up to Karamea and through the Otira," a spokeswoman said.
The flowering is believed to be linked to climatic conditions in previous seasons and it is not known why it flowers en masse some years and not others.
"We don’t keep any notes or records of when the rata flowers — from memory it’s been five to six years since the last big flowering."
The area around Barrytown is a stronghold, though it is everywhere, even up the steep Ten Mile Valley.
At the aptly-named Rataview accommodation at Barrytown, Sophie Allan said it was one of the better flowering years she had seen.
"Most of the dark trees are the rata. This is a particularly good area back towards Golden Sands Road, a little microclimate."
At Otira, Diane Gordon-Burns said the rata had been flowering for a while and "crawling up the hill, as it does".
"It’s been spectacular this year, we’ve had it maybe three weeks.
"It is ... the brightest in quite some time."
Grey and Buller districts have northern rata, and most of Westland has southern rata.
Lake Moeraki Wilderness Lodge owner Gerry McSweeney said the southern rata flowering had moved its way up the hillside there.
"It starts on the warm north-facing slopes — Knights Point country that faces north. It moves up the mountain valleys."
Otira and Franz Josef valley were looking particularly red — "all the places where we have protected rata for the past 50 years".
In South Westland, flowering at sea level was over, having started in November and early December, and it was now peaking higher up.
Mr McSweeney said rata was at risk from possums and the disease myrtle rust, which had spread into Golden Bay and Nelson.
"This might be the best display we ever see," he said, though he noted myrtle rust was not establishing on the West Coast as feared.
Southern rata is a very bright red, and the northern rata, as seen around Greymouth north, is more dull. — Greymouth Star
