Gourmet trade getting a taste of karaka

Press, 4 April 1987, Page 22

Gourmet trade getting a taste of karaka

Country Diary

Derrick Rooney

' From time to time readers send bits Qf trees or shrubs to this office for identification; usually these arrive so shrivelled, or sre so small, that it’s impossible to say what they might be. Recently, though, a shrivelled leaf which came in was accompanied by a yellow fruit, and I had no difficulty in deciding what it was: a karaka. - Coincidentally, I’d been talking a few days earlier to a Chatham Islander whose recollections of an island childhood included a -vivid description of a largeleafed plant he called a “kopi” tree; when a child was injured, be recalled, his mother used to cut up a kopi leaf and lay bits of it between wound and bandage, plways being careful to get them the right way up. I made the Opihection then, but latyr went

to Johannes Andersen’s 1926 paper on Maori plant names for confirmation that the kopi of the Chathams and the karaka of the mainland are one and the same. There’s a bit more to it than that, because the. presence of this tree on the Chathams tells us something about the pre-Euro-pean diet and medicine chest of the Maori. Karaka is a coastal tree, often round-headed, with large green leaves and distinctive yellow fruit It is plentiful on the Kaikoura Coast and Banks Peninsula. Its importance to the ancient Maori is problematical. In his book, “Maori Agriculture,” the anthropologist Elsdon Best, dismissed the tree as a “minor” food source — but it was obviously important enough for the Maori to carry it around and plant in various parts of the country. In fact, the number of obviously planted coastal groves of karaka and the evidence that the Maori carried the karaka as far afield as the Chathams and the Kermadecs suggest that they regarded this tree very highly. Karaka fruit need jiot be picked from the tree; when ripe, they fail to the ground. Thjp ripe

flesh of the fruit is edible but the raw kernels contain a toxin known as karakin — first identified back in 1872. This can cause unpleasant convulsions and in some circumstances can be fatal. Nevertheless, it was the - kernels, or nuts, rather than the flesh which provided food for the Maori, and they had ways of treating the karaka to make it ’ edible. There may even be a revival of karaka eating on the way, because in recent years some tree-crops enthusiasts — with an eye on the lucrative gourmet trade in curious flavours — have been investigating it ds an alternative crop. This is said to be the way to treat karaka berries to make them edible. Rub off all the fleshy covering (this is important) and put the kernels in cold water. Bring to the boil, and cook well for three to four hours. Tip out the cooked kernels into an openmesh bag (the Maori used flax baskets) and immerse them in a stream for a week. If you don’t have a twinkling, unpolluted stream handy, Just soak the kernels In cold water, changing the water once or twice daily, g'

After all this, the thin, fibrous husk of the karaka nut may be peeled back to extract the brown, oval kernel, which may then be steamed, or roasted and salted, and eaten immediately. According to some accounts, the Maori used to store prepared karaka kernels for up to a year, hanging them up in a basket in a cool, airy place after first drying them in the sun. All this sounds difficult and positively dangerous — but at base the process is no more complex than the one required to turn barley into malt, and about 40 generations of Maori people ate karaka kernels without coming to any harm. I don’t know if any still do, but in 1925, when Best wrote bis book, he reported that the karaka remained a source of food along the Waikato River. : , ; . The natural life span of a karaka tree is estimated to be a couple of centuries, perhaps more, so that there are many old karaka trees which probably predate the arrival of, European settlers. Often there is evidence that these were planted; many groves are circular, with a central tree. This seems to have been a favoured way of laying

out karaka orchards, and might have, had ritual significance.

The distribution of the karaka is mainly coastal; it is plentiful in the North Island but less so in the South Island, where its natural southern limits are about Banks Peninsula in the east and Jacksons Bay in the west. Old trees found south of Banks Peninsula were probably planted, some by Maoris. A well-known grove stands at Blue Cliffs station, south of Timaru. The karaka was certainly well established in the South Island when Europeans arrived, .because William Anderson, naturalist on Cook’s last voyage, described groves of karaka growing in Queen Charlotte Sound, at. Ship Cove, with tawa trees. Both trees, he noted, bore “a kind of a plum the size of prunes, the one yellow and the other black, but neither of them of a very agreeable taste.” Food is food, however, and Anderson reported that the “natives eat both and our people did the same.” Though common on the Chathams, the karaka probably did not occur naturally there. There seems no doubt; however, that it is a true native of mainland New Zealand, despite persistent tradi-

tions of its .introduction in (variously) the Aotea canoe, the Tainui canoe (along with the kumara), and even by Kupe himself.

As the New Zealand species of karaka is not known to occur anywhere else, all of these traditions must be wishful thinking. Karaka belongs in a plant family called the Corynocarpaceae, which has only one genus (Corynocarpus) and is confined to the Pacific region. Besides the New Zealand species there are _ two in Australia and Papua New Guinea, one in New Caledonia, and one in Vanuata. : No naturally occurring karaka has been found in Polynesia i (except in New Zealand) and there is fairly good evidence that the New Zealand species, C. laevigatus, was in its original state confined to the New Zealand mainland coast — perhaps to the north-western coast of the North Island. . » Corynocarpus is a somewhat anomalous genus in that the flowers of the various speciesare very similar, whereas the fruits are dramatically different — a reversal of the situation with, say, < native orchids of the Pacific Modern taxo--

nomic techniques such as chromosome, counting and leafchemistry analysis have enabled scientists to establish that each of the species is confined to its own geographic region. Maori tradition must therefore bow to fact ' . • • Yet to be resolved is the question of the karaka’s original : distribution within . New Zealand. In the Kermadecs, New Zealand’s subtropical islands, the karaka is abundant, but geological evidence suggests that it was taken. there by the Maori; the Kermadeos are of volcanic origin, much younger.than the New Zealand mainland, and it is unlikely that the karaka could have evolved there. Maoris sailed in New Zealand waters for about 1000 years before Europeans arrived and it would be extraordinary, to say the least, if in that time they carried on no commerce in food plants. Some empirical evidence exists to support the contention that originally the karaka was pretty well confined to the western coast and that in most eastern sites it owes its existence to cultivation by the Maori.

Karaka is a fast-growing tree' which fruits within 10 years of raising from seed. If its use had been solely as a food plant it is unlikely to have been so widely spread, given the other available; food sources, but the karaka also had medicinal uses which reflect' keen powers, of observation. . The leaves of the . karaka served two purposes. When the upper surface of a leaf was placed on a wound it had a soothing and heeling effect On the contrary, the lower surface had a "drawing” effect and was used to treat boils and ' badly infected wounds. In more recent times cheriiical analysis has revealed that the agents of virtue in karaka leaves included - rare nitro compounds — compounds so rare that until they were -isolated from karaka leaves they were not known to occur in nature. . ? ;. As far as I know research into the possible pharmaceutical values of karaka stopped there and this interesting native tree remains among the 95 per cent of the world’s dwindling flora which has never been properly — if at all — investigated for possible to mankind;