Native Flora and Fauna

Learn about some of our native plants and trees below

Tūpākihi/Tutu (also known as toot)

Edward Shortland wrote and recorded in 1851 about his travels in to the Dunedin area of the time that

“having crossed the valley, we struck into a path which brought us to the south end of Otakou, across an undulating country, where the soil was generally good, producing tall fern, and vigorous “tupakihi”, besides wood at intervals.”

Tutu is highly poisoness to humans and animals. The poison effects the body’s nervous system and muscular systems. Buchanan wrote in 1865 in his list of useful trees of Otago that the tutu was poisoness apart from the succulent petals surrounding the seeds and it was also used in epilepsy with supposed success.

There is a detailed recipe recorded by Bell in 1940 on the use of the tutu/tūpākihi;

“Tūpākihi. Nearly fill a billy with leaves. Cover with water. Boil till the water is coloured. Bathe the broken leg or bruise with the warm water in which the leaves were boiled. Apply the ‘kaikai’ plaster. Tie with a ‘bandage’ - raupō or flax or bark (hammered with a stone to make it soft) or fibres (muka). In summer, rub the injured part with pig’s fat (or some kind of oil) before applying the plaster, because it gets very hot. Tūpākihi plaster: Cut a young stalk of tūpākihi about 2 feet long. Scrape out the green pith and sap with a knife or a shell. Apply the plaster to the injured part, every four hours for a week. The plaster keeps the injured part cool and prevents inflammation. If it is a broken leg, obtain a piece of bark for a splint as nearly as possible the same size as the leg.”

Rauaruhe- Bracken Fern

The root of the Bracken Fern was an important source of food for Māori. It was in abundance and available in all seasons. Some of the external uses of Fern roots were applying the fern ashes as a dressing to severe burns, the fern fronds bruised and moisture from them applied to mosquito bites and used as a covering for wintering potatoes. A southern tradition was recorded by Beattie from one of his informants:

“I have eaten fernroot. It was dug, then dried in the sun and then stored in the whata (storehouse). To get it ready for eating it was tied in to a bundle, soaked in water, and then roasted by rolling it over on the cinders - not in an umu (steam-oven). It was beaten after this...... it used to be beaten in to a lump, and waikōrari – flax honey – was dripped on it to make it sweet.”

Waoriki – Māori Onion (Bulbinella hookeri)

A common herb with a bulbous root and yellow flower that grew around Dunedin and is still plentiful. When it is crushed up it smells like onion.

Mānuka

Mānuka wood was once fashioned into canoe deckings, canoe poles, fish hooks, fishing rods, eel pots and other fish traps. It was also used to make gardening implements and weapons such as spears, clubs etc. Beattie recorded that the mānuka leaves were boiled and rubbed on a leg itch.21 An infusion of kōwhai bark and mānuka bark is used, rubbed on outwardly for pains in back and side. Edward Shortland commented that the whalers drank so much mānuka tea that is was called the whalers tea. Beattie recorded that constipation could be cured by steeping the mānuka leaves in water and drinking the infusion.

Rimu

According to Riley, rimu wood provided Māori with one of the most effective war weapons, this being a long spear used to defend forts and barricades, some were measured up to twenty feet in length. The wood was used for medicinal purposes also. Rimu bark is infused to heal ulcers, burns and scalds. The excessively astringent gum, obtained by making incisions in the bark, is applied to wounds to stop bleeding. The dark red gum of the rimu was used to help headaches and stomach problems. A walnut size of gum was dissolved in half a pint of water and taken.

Pōhue

This was a bindweed that grew commonly on the forest margin as to smother the supporting vegetation. The native pōhue species were dug up and the roots dried and set aside for the winter. They were reconstitued in water and steamed in a hangi. They were were eaten as a relish with fish.26 Beattie collected information about this plant being used as a kīnaki (relish) when cooking eel.27 It was woven around the eel and cooked in an earth oven (hangi). The skin of this creeper, scraped and formed into a poultice, is very efficacious in drawing boils and causing them to suppurate.

Harakeke/Kōrari

This plant was a hugely important resource to Māori but also to Pākehā when they arrived on our shores. Flax is an incredibly strong and useful plant, used for making clothing, ropes and medicinal purposes. The flax leaves were used but also the flax rhizome and roots. Edward Pohau Ellison of Ōtākou who became a medical doctor, gave medical advice in the newspaper to those with dysentry;

“Dysentry cure and care. Do not take any food on the first day. Take boiled liquids only. To clean out the bowels, take Epsom salts every two hours. There is no problem using flax water but it may be too severe for children....”

Beattie collected information on using the flax root for toothache;

“Toothache is said to have been a very rare affliction in olden days. It was called nihotuka. Juice from the flax root, so the collector was told, if poured in to the ear would make the recipient give a cold shiver, but in about 20 minutes time it would cause the toothache to depart.”

The kōrari part of the flax was also useful. In our southern traditions the kōrari was used to make a musical instrument. The porotu was a type of flute that was made from wood or kōrari and had between 4-6 holes in it. This would be a great project to do with the children in your class and see if you can get a sound from them. Beattie wrote:

“Cuts..., scratches and wounds were treated with various healing agencies according to which was most convienient at the time and place. Flax gum (pia-harakeke) was extensively used. A European who came to Otago in 1857 told me that following the maori example he used flax gum for cuts, binding it round with whitau (dressed flax) and that he found it very effacious”.

Houī – Ribbonwood

Tōtara

The tōtara was an incredibly useful plant for Southern Māori. It was put to multiple uses including wood for housing, canoes, musical instruments, toys, the bark was used for torches and containers for water, preserved birds and rats etc. The tōtara was seen as a chiefly tree. In the South Island the muttonbirders would make torches with the bark being interwoven with flax fibre and saturated with mutton bird fat.

Herries Beattie recorded that:

“to get boiling water the ancient Māori had to resort to a certain amount of ingenuity. As he had no pottery nor metal utensils he had to use a wooden vessel sometimes called a waka but more commonly known as an ipu. This was sometimes a tree trunk hollowed out and sometimes it was a receptacle made of tōtara bark in such a way that it would hold water. The usual way to make these vessels was to bark a tōtara tree and lay the bark in strips overlapping each other”.

The ribbonwood bark could be srtipped off a tree and used for cloaks and other clothing items. Murdoch writes that the name “thousand jacket” is given to this tree for the many lace-like layers of inner bark it has, “ribbonwood” for the fact that the bark can be torn into ribbon-like strips, and “lacebark” for the texture of its bark fibre. A mock korowai (cloak) could be made with students in class as an example. There is only one actual example in New Zealand and that is stored in the Canterbury Museum.

The kākahu-houī is a mat made of ribbonwood bark (kiri houī) The bark was scraped, dried and beaten into a kind of material suitable for making mats, baskets, poi, belts, piupiu etc.

Kahikātea

This was is a tall white pine. This was a tree that provided Māori with wood for weapons and canoes, torches from its bark, gum-resin and soot for tattooing from its heart-wood. White wrote about the tattooing of moko, that the bone of an albatross was carved in to a needle for picking out the line. The soot from burnt kauri gum, charcoal from burnt kahikātea and sometimes the milk from women to soften the mixture was used as a type of ink.

Pōkākā

This is known as the hīnau elsewhere and has some other Māori names. It is a native forest tree and it is a very tolerant plant in cold conditions. It has tiny leaves. Beattie comments that the pōkākā bark is steeped in boiling water and becomes a step in the dying process of flax fibre (whitau)

Kōwhai

Beattie also wrote about the kōwhai’s medicinal property in the South Island. The kōwhai had a number of medicinal purposes. The bark was soaked in water and was an excellent remedy for cuts. Swellings of any sort were treated with wai kōwhai (kōwhai water) and this was a swift cure. Another internal remedy was for colds and sore throats. The bark was steeped in boiling water and the infusion had to be drunk fresh as it will not keep.

Beattie was told of an incedent where kōwhai juice was used successfully:

“One aged man narrated the case of a Māori who had been with him on a sealing hunt. This man suffered very nasty injuries when his face unfortunately came between the teeth of a kekeno (fur seal). As soon as possible waikōhai (kōwhai juice) was poured into the wounds and in two or three days the man was right again.”

Poroporo

The poroporo has berries that are poisonous when green but safe when ripe. Riley wrote that;

“Poroporo were planted around villages of the Māori and in their plantations for the value of their fruit, a great favourite with the children. Its dark-green leaves were put on the hot stones of the earth steam oven, sprinkled with water, then the food to be cooked was added, and everything covered with mats and earth.”

Poroporo was also used for skin irritibilities and bruises. It was said that the stalks and leaves, were not eaten. However they were boiled with mānuka, and then that water was used for bathing eczema.

Ramarama (Pepper tree)

Kaikōmako

The Kaikōmako has small creamy, white flowers are produced between November and February, followed by a shiny black fruit in autumn. They are a favourite food of the bellbird.

The Māori name kaikōmako means food (kai) of the bellbird (kōmako). Traditionally the Māori used kaikōmako to make fire by repeatedly rubbing a pointed stick into a groove on a piece of māhoe.

This tree had sharply pungent leaves and bark and the leaves would sometimes be rubbed in the face or body as a scent. Beattie recorded the ramarama as good wood to make spinning tops (child toy). He also recorded that the ramarama leaves could be boiled in water and the mixture taken for certain internal ills.

Kiwakiwa

This was a creek fern sometimes planted to set up a rāhui – restriction on a place.

Māhoe

Māhoe is a soft wood that burns slowly and is started using a rubbing stick. Generally it is a tougher wood like that of kaikōmako which burns well. Dry moss was sometimes put at the end of the stick to hasten the ignition.

Mikimiki

The leaves of the Mikimiki (Mingimingi in the North Island) were boiled and the juice taken for headaches or colds.

Tī Kōuka – Cabbage tree

The interior part of the tree stem and the roots, called kāuru, was a staple food of the Māori at one time, being steam cooked in a type of hangi. The tī trunks collected by Māori were young plants that had germinated from seed dropped by mature plants or from cuttings taken. Tī Kōuka take only four years to grow one and half metres tall.37 Beattie recorded that

“A good section of tī – cabbage trees – was called para kāuru. While the soft part of the tī leaves could be cooked at anytime and chewed and eaten to ensure regularity of the bowels.”

Matipō

Kaio (Ngaio)

Juice from the bark or leaves of the ngaio has long supplied the Māori with a repellent and an antidote to the bites of two of the most irritating and voracious insect pests around, namely mosquitos that assail humans at night, and sandflies.that attack by day. Kaio leaves were known to draw sores and for skin troubles.

Matipō which is also known as māpau, māpou, matipou and tīpou was used for toothache and for cleaning the teeth. Beattie records that:

“you could pull the leaves of māpou as if had a sweet scent and could chew them a little, but they were hot like ramarama – peppertree.”