Maraka! Maraka! Otautahi rises from the ruins - te karaka

he AitAKA A tāNe
PlANtS nā Rob tiPA
Rangiora –
friend
and foe
Rangiora is the bushman’s friend as well as
a lethal poison that can kill. You can chew
the gum, but never, ever swallow.
Rangiora is one of those extraordinary native bush plants that had a
multitude of uses for both our tūpuna and early pioneers. Although
this plant is commonly known as “the bushman’s friend”, it is also a
powerful poison capable of killing humans and livestock.
Starting with the obvious, rangiora has a large leathery leaf with
a soft downy underside, which makes it a natural substitute for toilet
paper for hunters and bush walkers caught short in the bush.
In fact, the underside of the leaf is a worthy substitute for writing
paper. It serves as a medium to scribble a message on when there is
nothing else at hand. Some thrifty bush scribes lifted the art of improvisation
to new heights by using a rangiora leaf as a postcard, complete
with address, a brief message and a stamp affixed as legal tender for
delivery.
64 te KaraKa MaKarIrI 2011
The name rangiora, the plant and its leaves hold a spiritual meaning
to Māori as a symbol of life. The plant was also known as pukapuka,
whārangi and several other names depending on the particular variety
and the region where it grew.
Some sources suggest the plant’s spring flowering signalled that the
weather was safe to plant kūmara.
To gardeners, rangiora is officially known as Brachyglottis repanda,
an attractive small tree or shrub found commonly between North
Cape and Greymouth and Kaikōura in the south. It grows up to six
metres in height in coastal and lowland forest, scrub and forest
margins.
The leaves range in size from 5 to 25cm long and 5cm to 20cm wide
but one variety, Brachyglottis repanda rangiora, found on either side
of Cook Strait, grows to 50cm long and 27cm wide. The plant flowers
profusely in spring with large clusters of creamy, fragrant panicles.
Rangiora leaves and flowers are powerful poisons if chewed and
swallowed and yet those same properties give the plant strong antiseptic
and disinfectant qualities, our forebears understood to dress
wounds and sores.
In Māori Healing and Herbal, Murdoch Riley records numerous
reports of the leaves of rangiora and pukapuka used to treat old sores.
early settlers mixed bruised leaves with olive oil as a poultice to treat
boils.
The leaves were poisonous to stock, causing staggers in horses and
cattle. Sources suggest the toxin was concentrated in the young growing
tips, leaf stalks and the stems.
If a horse was “not too far gone with poison, the best treatment
was to saddle it up and run it hard for a couple of hours to work out the
poison,” one stockman suggested.
Despite the plant’s formidable reputation as a powerful poison,
Māori cut the bark on the west side of the trunk of the tree and collected
the gum that exuded from the wound.
This was stored in water to keep it soft and was chewed as a highly
aromatic gum to treat bad breath. Sources believe the gum may have
been subjected to a process of purification before use. There was one
potentially fatal catch for anyone with a taste for this gum. If you swallowed
it you would die.
Māori used the gum as a scent, heating it in tītoki seed oil or hinu
kererū (pigeon fat) until it dissolved to produce a scented hair oil or
ointment.
The gum was also used on shark hooks, but it is not known whether
the gum was used to seal the bindings or whether its poisonous properties
had any effect on subduing a hooked shark.
Reports suggest some varieties of Brachyglottis have leaves with
toxic properties, but it is not clear from historical records whether
Māori used the leaves of some varieties for cooking and avoided others.
They certainly used the generous leaves of rangiora for cooking,
although again, it is not obvious whether they selected leaves from
non-toxic varieties of the plant or if the toxins were neutralised by the
cooking process.
Records suggest rangiora leaves were sometimes used to wrap fish,
tuna (eels), parcels of hīnau cakes and aruhe meal for steaming in the
hāngi. The leaves were also used to line small harakeke kete to hold
sifted pua (raupō pollen) and to cover food.
One poisonous fungi was deliberately wrapped in rangiora leaves
and cooked to neutralise the fungi for human consumption.
Captain James Cook’s botanists collected samples of rangiora from
Queen Charlotte Sound in 1773, which were held at Kew Gardens in
London. In europe the plant is used as a homeopathic remedy for
urinary and kidney complaints.
PhotogRAPh Rob tiPA
te KaraKa MaKarIrI 2011 65