Fern Root Was Staple Item Of Maori Food

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31327, 25 March 1967, Page 16

Fern Root Was Staple Item Of Maori Food

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum) Thriving in all open country in New Zealand, and in good soil growing to six feet, the bracken fern (Pteridium esculentum) has been well described as the farmer’s misery. To the Maori the “root” (rhizome) was the great food of the land, the universal staple vegetable available everywhere, at call throughout the year.

Thomas Brunner realised this, at Okarito, in Westland, on October 21, 1847, eleven months out from Nelson in his epic exploration: “I believe I have now acquired the two greatest requisites for bushmen in New Zealand: the capability of walking barefoot, and the proper method of cooking and eating fernroot.” To the Maori, whose year ended in autumn, October was the sixth month, the last month of the fern-root digging season, which commenced in April. In spite of the cold for parties camping in the open, it was considered more profitable to dig when the growth of competing weeds was at its weakest and to stop when the new shoots began to spout in early summer. Long experience had taught the Canterbury Maoris that the best fern-root grew near the coast in rich, loose soil, far from the cabbage palm groves on the foothills. Even here it was necessary to select, the diggers retaining only those roots which were crisp enough to break easily when bent. The tedium of such operations was lessened by the favourite Maori device of the communal working bee (ohu) where men, women and children travelled together to the bracken grounds. Using their long digging-sticks as levers, the men turned over the heavy masses of earth, from which the women and children with small paddle-shaped wooden trowels extracted the rhizomes from the root tangle. As the fern-root was unpalatable when “green” it was dried in the sun from one to four days, and packed into baskets for transport to the home base, where it was stored in elevated food racks. Because such a bulky harvest was gathered, only the strongest men could carry it to the permanent settlements, and every effort was made to select the ground close to a river where the root harvest could be transported in canoes. . When required, the roots were roasted over an open fire and handed to a circle of women who sat, each with her anvil stone (karaa) of greywacke, and short wooden beater (patu aruhe). The(first pounding removed the bars and enabled the long fibres, which ran like wires through the root, to be drawn out.

The remainder was again pounded to the consistency of a tough dough, which could be eaten as was, or served up as a gruel, mixed in water with cabbage-palm sugar, juice of the tutu berry (Coriaria arbofea) or the nectar of the flax-flower (korari). With the universal pipi shell-fish. the fern-root (arune) was the staple, the “iron ration” of Maori food. At festivals, the guest was

reminded of this, when the fern-root was served on platters by a troupe of young women, swaying as they sang. “What is the food you and I shall eat? It will be pipi, and it will be aruhe, the root which binds our land."— R.S.D. The illustration shows a fern-root pounder from Moa-Bone Cave, Redcliffs, with a stone anvil recently excavated at Kairaki.