The ‘sweet potato’

Press, 2 August 1985, Page 18

The ‘sweet potato’

One of the most popular and relatively cheap vegetables available in Christchurch these days is the kumara. The fat, purple, tuberous roots, some weighing individually almost a kilogram, can be seen in every supermarket and greengrocer’s shop. Roasted, baked, boiled, or steamed, they are delicious, living up to their old name of “sweet potato.” They are, of course, not potatoes; kumaras belong to the same family as morning glory and convolvulus. Originating in South America, they found their way into the Pacific and were one of the few agricultural plants brought by the early Polynesians to New Zealand from their more tropical homeland.

Kumaras were the only plant which the Maoris were able to cultivate successfully to any extent in these relatively cooler islands; once they had learned to keep them successfully over the winter they were eventually grown as far south as Banks Peninsula. The sites of pre-historic kumara gardens may still often be recognised in several ways. Fine gravel which is found mixed into soils, and which does not occur there naturally, often indicates land which was prepared for planting a kumara crop. Regular lines or low walls of stones and soil, as well as mounds, usually indicate land preparation for kumara gardens, as do pits from

which gravel was taken for a soil additive or which were roofed over and used for storage of the crop. The edible roots of the modern cultivated kumara are far greater in size than were those of the variety grown by the pre-European Maori. Early European accounts describe these as being about as thick as a human finger, although there was probably considerable variation in size according to the suitability of the growing environment. Despite this, kumaras were a very important item in the Maori diet, the only root vegetable they had in any large quantity. Although

fern root was abundant it cannot be compared for palatibility or nourishment value with the kumara. It is sometimes said that the Maoris can hardly have found it worth while growing kumaras in some areas of the South Island, despite the fact that the evidence points fairly clearly to their having done so. Probably, we are too inclined to assess the land as we would today, according to its commercial viability. A people whose only substantial vegetable resource was the kumara may well have been prepared to make a considerable effort to grow it — even if (by today’s standards) the returns hardly justified the outlay of labour. Certainly, with the advent of the common or white potato, first introduced by James Cook, the Maori people willingly abandoned cultivation of the kumara in favour of the more prolific and profitable European staple crop.

By

BEVERLEY McCULLOCH