Formerly the balls were made of raupo and the cords of flax but today they tend to be made of plastic shopping-bag material and yarn.
There are stands of Banbar and Swamp Paperbark fringing the northern and eastern margins, with a patchy understorey of Broadleaf Cumbungi.
Some of the smaller wind instruments were also sung into, and the sound of the poi (raupo ball swung on the end of a flax cord) provided a rhythmic accompaniment to waiata poi.
The CMS had an established mission at Kerikeri where they stayed while Henry and other CMS members and built a store of plank and timber and a raupo hut on Paihia beach.
Typha | Typha orientalis | Typha latifolia | Platanus orientalis | Typha domingensis | Fossils of ''S. aurorae'' (left) and ''S. orientalis'' (right) at the National Museum of Nature and Science | William (marcha orientalis) | Trema orientalis | Rhynchelmis orientalis | Orientalis Ecclesiae | Nauclea orientalis | Imago, larva and ''Typha latifolia | Hyacinthus orientalis | Fagus orientalis | Crataegus orientalis | cattail, ''Typha'' |
They are similar in size and shape, being oval, about 1.6 km long by 1.3 km wide, with large central areas of open water when full and with shorelines vegetated with concentric fringes of the introduced bulrush Typha orientalis, sedges, paperbarks and other plants tolerant of seasonal waterlogging.