Like all podcarps, Totara trees have cones – male and female cones grow on separate trees. In autumn the female tree produces fleshy berry-like juicy scales or fruit, bright red when mature. Fruits take about a year to ripen, but may be found throughout the year, however most often between April and May. The fruit is readily eaten many native birds, including kereru, tui, and kakariki.
Along with other native conifers in Wellington, in particular miro and rimu, it usually forms the scattered, majestic emergent storey stretching above the dense canopy of broadleaf trees. Once widspread, but now gone throughout most of its former range.
With its ability to withstand wind and tolerate trimming, Totara is very suitable for shelter belts and wind breaks. Totara is the most sacred tree in traditional Māori lore.The distinctive red, somewhat oily wood was the timber of preference for use for constructing waka, and carvings. European settlers also developed a regard for the totara as a material, its durability, and the ease by which it could be fashioned into fence posts and street poles.
The largest known living tōtara, the Pouakani Tree, near Pureora in the central North Island, is over 35 m tall and nearly 4 m in trunk diameter at breast height. Bushmen discovered it in 1950. Other large trees are known in this area, while Whirinaki Forest, to the east, but also on deep recent volcanic soils, has groves of very tall tōtara (over 40 m in height).
The tree has a long lifespan, and some specimens can live for over a thousand years.