If you’re wandering around downtown Pukekohe, you might think that Seddon Park is a pleasant enough place to stop for a rest, with its benches, trees and rose beds. What you might not realise is that the park is home to a very special tree that can be traced all the way back to the battlefields of Italy in the 1940s.
When Kiwi soldier Sam Allen was wounded in Sangro Valley during World War II, he sheltered under a Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum), which are native to the Mediterranean. While he was resting, he collected one of the large brown pea-like seed pods, which he gave to his mother Harriet – known as Popsy – when he returned to Auckland after the war.
Popsy planted one of the seeds in a pot at her home in Parnell. It grew, and she gave the young plant to her son Dr William (Bill) Allen, who had also served in the war as a medic in Egypt. Bill and his wife Sheila first planted the tree at their home in Wellington Street, Pukekohe, in 1948, then dug it up and transplanted it when they moved in 1952 to Seddon Street, which was also the site of Bill’s doctor’s practice.
Eventually the family sold the home and the land was converted into a park – at which point the tree’s branches were beginning to grow along the ground, putting it at risk of dying.
