Dacrycarpus dacrydioides, commonly known as kahikatea (from Māori) and white pine, is a coniferous tree endemic to New Zealand. A podocarp, it is New Zealand's tallest tree, gaining heights of 60 metres (200 feet) over a life span of 600 years. It was first described botanically by the French botanist Achille Richard in 1832 as Podocarpus dacrydioides, and was given its current binomial name Dacrycarpus dacrydioides in 1969 by the American botanist David de Laubenfels. Analysis of DNA has confirmed its evolutionary relationship with other species in the genera Dacrycarpus and Dacrydium.

In Māori culture, it is an important source of timber for the building of waka and making of tools, of food in the form of its berries, and of dye. Its use for timber and its damp fertile habitat, ideal for dairy farming, have led to its decimation almost everywhere except South Westland.

Kahikatea seeds have fleshy structures called receptacles attached to them, which encourage birds such as kererū and tūī to eat them and disperse the seeds. The water storage ability of these structures may also act to protect seeds from drying out. It supports many smaller plants in its own branches, which are called epiphytes; 100 different species have been recorded on one tree alone.

Kahikatea is a coniferous tree reaching a height of 50–65 m (164–213 ft), making it the tallest New Zealand tree, with a trunk 1–2 m (3.3–6.6 ft) through. It has a 600 year life span and gains maturity after between 250 and 450 years. Near the base of the tree, the roots are typically buttressed and grooved. Adult trees that grow in clusters develop interlocking root islands that may help prevent individual trees from falling during high winds. The wood itself is odourless and white. The majority of the trunk is branchless—in adults around three quarters—and has grey or dark grey coloured bark which falls off thickly in flakes. Young adults have no branches in a third to a half of the trunk and have a conic shape.

In juveniles the leaves are 3–7 (reaching 4 mm (0.16 in) in young adults) by 0.5–1 mm (0.020–0.039 in) and a dark green to red colour that come to a marked point. They are narrow, arranged in almost opposite pairs spreading away from a wider base, and curved like a scythe. In adulthood the leaves change dramatically and are a brown-green colour and just 1–2 mm (0.039–0.079 in) long, waxy, and grow overlapping one another tightly.

As a conifer, kahikatea has no flowers and instead has cones. Male cones, which occur on different trees to female ones, are 1 cm (0.39 in) long and rectangular. The pollen is a pale yellow colour and has a three-pored or trisaccate shape that is distinctive in the New Zealand flora and so can be identified easily. The fruit is highly modified with a yellow-orange fleshy receptacle that is 2.5–6.5 mm (0.098–0.256 in) long. The purple-black seed is roughly spherical and 4–6 mm (0.16–0.24 in) in diameter. Both the seed and the ovary are covered with a thin layer of wax. Kahikatea has a diploid chromosome count of 20.

Several different glycosides have been isolated from the leaves; the tricetin 3',5'-di-O-/β-glucopyranoside and 3'-0-β-xylopyranoside have been found only in kahikatea. The receptacles and seeds have been found to contain anthocyanins, rare in gymnosperms, which it was suggested in one 1988 paper make the fruit as a whole more attractive to prospective animal dispersers.

The banks were completely clothed with the finest timber my eyes ever beheld, of a tree we had before seen, but only at a distance [...]. Thick woods of it were everywhere upon the banks, every tree as straight as a pine, and of immense size, and the higher we went the more numerous they were.