A tree of summer. The peach tree was brought to New Zealand by early European settlers, planted in sheltered gardens and sunny orchards. Now it grows wild in old orchards, along roadsides, in waste places, a flash of pink blossom in the spring landscape. The peach tree is small, reaching eight metres at most, with a spreading crown and reddish-brown bark. The leaves are long, narrow, and toothed, arranged alternately along the branches. The flowers are the story – pink, five-petalled, appearing in early spring before the leaves. The tree is a cloud of pink, a sign that winter is over and summer is coming. The fruit is the prize – the peach, fuzzy and sweet, golden and juicy, the taste of warm days. In New Zealand, peach trees have escaped from cultivation. They grow wild in the north, in the warm valleys, in the corners of old farms. These wild trees are living history, preserving varieties that are no longer grown commercially. A gnarled old peach tree in an abandoned orchard might be fifty years old, its fruit still sweet, its blossoms still pink. The peach tree is short-lived. It grows fast, fruits young, and dies young. A peach tree might live for twenty years – a blink of an eye in the forest. But in that time, it produces thousands of peaches, feeds hundreds of birds, spreads its seeds across the landscape. To see an old peach tree in flower is to see a piece of history. The settlers who planted it are gone, but the tree remains. It blossoms every spring, fruits every summer, drops its leaves every autumn. It does not know that it is a stranger here. It just grows, and blooms, and feeds the birds. The peach tree is not a native. It is not endemic. It is an immigrant, a settler, a tree that made a new home in a new land. It has been here for two hundred years. It will be here as long as the summers are warm.