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Mānia is a densely-tufted, hardy, grass-like sedge that historical records suggest was mainly used for bedding and waist belts by Ngāi Tahu. Botanical references describe it as a very distinctive ornamental grass with colours ranging from shiny to dark green to yellow/green, red/green, bronze, and various shades of brown or golden brown, depending on the source.
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There are not that many native New Zealand plants that produce a sweet and tasty fruit that you can pick and eat straight off the plant.
Pātōtara, a prickly low-growing shrub, is one of the few. Its juicy yellow/orange berries that ripen in summer and early autumn were once a popular sweet treat for Māori and Pākehā children, in the days before they could buy confectionery from the corner dairy.
In Māori tradition, the leaves of either korokio or karamū were used in a ceremony to lift the tapu from foods. The hard wiry wood from its intertwined branches was fashioned into fish hooks, and also made into knives to pierce the skin in treating battle wounds or injuries.
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Although they are widely known as flaxes, wharariki and harakeke are actually lilies. The two species are usually found in different environments, but do cross-breed and hybridise. Horticulturists have bred many coloured ornamental forms that are widely used in landscaping, and some well-known cultivars used by weavers are hybrids.
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Kōhia is a handsome climber found high in the canopy of the tallest trees of our native forests, and is perhaps better known to most of us as New Zealand passion vine, passion flower, or passion fruit.
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Before human settlement of Aotearoa, the dominant cover of higher alpine grasslands was large snow tussocks of the Chionochloa family. At lower altitudes, sub-alpine grasslands were primarily dominated by short or low tussocks (less than 50 cm), including a taonga species for Ngāi Tahu – silver tussock (Poa cita) – and hard tussock (Festuca novae-zelandiae).
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For the conservationist in all of us, the sight of rātā in full flower against a backdrop of snow-covered mountain peaks is a sight to warm the heart.
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