When Auckland was founded as a colonial town a tree stood near the summit which gave the hill its English name. Two accounts identify it as a pōhutukawa ("Metrosideros excelsa"). This tree was cut down by a pākehā settler in 1852, in an act of vandalism in one account, or for firewood in another. It seems likely this was a different tree from the tōtara ("Podocarpus totara") which, as a sacred tree, had given the hill one of its Maori names. A radiata pine was planted in the 1870s to replace the previous tōtara . John Logan Campbell repeatedly tried to grow native trees on the hill's summit, but the trees failed to survive - with only two pines, originally part of a shelter belt for the native trees, surviving for long. However, in 1960, one of the two was felled in another attack, possibly for firewood.