THE CABBAGE-TREE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17336, 27 November 1916, Page 10

THE CABBAGE-TREE.

TI PALM AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS

Canterbury people cannot but have noticed thnt all the cabbage-trees are in rich flower this season. Some weather-wise people, Maori fashion, see in this abundance of blossom, and in the' plentiful flowering of the flax plant, portent of a hot, dry summer, hut exactly on what sciont-ifio basis they would probably be puzzled to explain. It may bo that an exceptionally wet winter such as we have had is likely to be followed by a more than ordinarily dry summer, and that tho ti-flowering is stimulated by tho uncommon amount of moisture which the ground has absorbed; but the popular diagnosis which transposes causo and effect and makes the cabbage-tree and the flax responsible for tho hot summer is suggestive of Mark Twain's new barometer; ho never saw a barometer have les9 effect on tho weather. Whatever the summer may bring us, however, the fragrant, creamy-white blossom of the cabbage-tree—ti-palm, palm-lily, asphodel, Cordylme Australis—is a garden and park beauty that is more conspicuous in its profusion this year than for a number of seasons past. This mo3t abundant palm of ours is said to flower only onco in three years, but this rule is by no means invariable. The toi, Cordyhne indivisa. the broad-leafed cousin of the is to be seen in its full glory in the mountainous parts of the North Island—flowers still more rarely; its blossoms are only seen every seven years. Not many specimens of the tot 'aro cultivated in Christchurch, but tiro ti seem s !, next to the oak, the most common ornament of the city's waysides and riverbanks and gardens. No citv in New Zealand is so generously be-ti'd as Christchurch. and some of the trees are splendid examples of the cordylm© tribe, with pre it branching "Heads each crowned with a mass of closely packed blossom. No native tree "is so easy of cultivation or so proof against extremes of weather. It grows as luxuriantly on the Canterbury Plains as on the hill slopes above Auckland Harbour; its tall, pencil trunks det the landscapes in the far north along the "Spirit' Track." to Cape Rcipgiv, and it is as plentiful on the wind-sw jpt levels of Southland. No plant of ours.is so thoroughly tvpical of New Zealand, or gives so characteristic a touch to the face of these islands; and although the flax and tho fern leaf have been adopted by some as badges, emblematical of the land—-the Survey Department's trademark is a flax bush—the cabbage-tree, with its unmistakable form, a link between tho tropic and temperate zones, would be even more appropriate as a national emblem and tree-totem. And hero the. thought comes that this gracenil palm of ours, which the first inhabitants of the land planted as memorial trees for the birth of chiefs and at- whose feet often they were laid in death , could scarcely be bettered as a green monument for the graves of our heroic dead in foreign lands. Groves of ti palms on the windy hills of Galhpoli would mark for centuries the resting places of our gallant, men, mark them more unmistakably than _ any other plant. Kowhai, Koromiko—tho native -funeral wreath—and manuka could also be planted about the dwellings of our dead, but the ti would give something of dignity and nobility to .an otherwise barren landscape tftat'will for ever be regarded as a. sacred little patch of New Zea-

land soil. Not many of our poets have expended praise on the cabbage-tree ._ They have found more inspiring subjects in the fern-tree, the pohutukawa and the rata. Alfred Domett is one of tho very few who described the ti in verse; ho found time to admire it in."R-anolf and Amohia ":

. . . That strange asphodel On tufts of green beyonet-blodcs Great bunches of white bloom upbore, Like blocks of sea-washed madrepore. That steeped the noon in fragrance wide, Till by tho exceeding sweet opprest Tho stately tree-fern leaned aside For languor. ." .

But to the Maori the ti is quick with poetio and legendary suggestion; it is twined about with " waiata" and story as thickly as you see some of these venerable cabbage-trees in Christchurch gardens grown mourid with pakeha ivies. Some of these ti-tnles come to mind to-dnv as I look out upon a tall double-headed member of the tribe rustling his thick head of sword-leaves high above his alien neighbours on the lawn. UNUAHO'S WIZARD TREE. ' It was a cabbage-tree that Unuaho, tho greatest tohunga of the Arawa.s, selected as the test object upon which to exercise his wizardry in his encounter with 'Selwyn the Elder, the famous first BishopSehvyn, that pioneer prelate's first visit to the Rotorua country. Some amazing details of this theological duel survive on Mokoia Island,' the scene of the episode. The story, as told me by Unuaho's grandson—who also was something of a tohunga —is that Selwyn endeavoured to convert the old warlock from paganism, and that Unuaho in his turn declared that the faith of the Maori was sufficient for him, and that indeed he was a god in himself. The tohunga proposed a test of powers in order to decide which of the two was the more powerful priest. A tall forked ti-palm grew in front of his thatched whare on the hillside. Unuaho stretched forth his hand and recited bis incantations, and that ti-tTec withered before the Bishop's eyes, its green tints disappeared, the leaves drooped grey and dead. Unuaho turnedrtriumphantly to the Bishop and said, " See, I have withered the ti before your eyes. Now/if you and your God are more powerful than me 'and mine, yon can' bring it to life again!" Tho Bishop declined the task, and Unuaho, reciting more wonderful karakias, his form quivering, his old eyes hazing, revived the withered palm, tree; its leaves turned trroen again and rustled in the lake breeze. The tohunga had conquered; the Bishop canoed back to Ohinomutu and never returned to the isle of wizardry, and Unuaho died a sturdy old heathen. That is the Maori version. Selwyn's no man ever heard. Whether he was the subject of hypnotic suggestion, or whatever occult powers were the heritage of those descendants of the ancient Eastern wise men, is unknoAvn to us. Selwyn, one would imagine, was not likely to be an easy subject for the exercise of the arts of roesmoric suggestion. But the blasting of the lone palm-tree by the wizardpriest of the Arawn's is to this day a firm article of belief on Mokoia. THE TAPU PALM.

Up the valley of the AVai-te-ti. a beautiful clear trout-stream that flows into Lake Rotorua from the western hills, old Matchaere once took me to see an unusually large and venerable ti palm—or whanake, as it is more often called there—a tree of celebrity in \he legends of the Arawas. At a bend in the lonely valley, where the little river ran in rapids whitening itself in cataracts and spray, there stood by itself on a tiny flat the largest ti palm I had ever seen. It was a monster of the cordylino family, not so much in height—though it was tall—as in thickness, w'ith an immense bunchy hoad. Around it grew a small grove of ancient shrubs. Matehaere said that the spot was called "The Sacred Grove of Ihenga," and that it was there, at the foot of the ti palm, that the ancestral pioneer. Ihenga—who lived and explored here nearly five hundred years ago—retired to invoke the gods and to work divinementa. He was an Ariki and a priest, and this was his "Motu-tapu," his holy place. The great palm""is said to have been planted by the hand of mau. "This." said

Mntchaero, " our people frequently did, becauso the whanake was pleasant to the eye; it was often planted as a birth-tree, when a child of rangatira rank was bom ; also, a kind of rough garment, a rain-turning capo, was ;r.ade from its leaves, and its fibre was useful in making snares for bird-catch-ing." The old Maoris have a liking for the ti-palm as a graveside memorial tree. On such places as Mokoia Island, a spot saturate with earth-magic, where generations of brown people have been gathered to 'the soil again, the liill slopes facing the rising sun arc dotted with cabbage-trees: each marks » grave. In tho oid churchyard at Mangere, on the Manukati Harbour, beside tho senria-stone church built by the Maoris before tho Waikntn war, and now used by tho European residents of the district, there is a,curious memento mori, a quaint conjunction of ancient and modern. Alongside a tombstone set up 'by the Government to the memory of the chief Epiho te Tuhi, who died in IS7S, there lies' a battered and broken old tin bath-tub. This was placed on the grave because it was tapu: it had been used by the chief just before he died. And over tho grave a venerable enbhnge tree gently swishes its long sword leaves.

THE WITCH TREES OF THE KAINGAROA. - On that great puniiec prairie the Kaingaroa Plains, extending over a thousand square miles of the heart of the North Island—a blank on the map, without a settlement, pakeha or Maori, except for two .or three tiny kaingas on its edges and in ona corner a Government prison tree-planting camp, without a forest, without a river—it is tho cabbage-treo that gives the desert its chief, indeed only, arboreal characteristic. It grows in thousands amid the fern and the manoao shrub —which resembles stunted manuka—and some aro of huge size; they look as if they had been there for hundreds of years; tough and weather-beaten, their long thin leaves whipped by unnumbered southerly gales. There is a tale of witchery about those ancient ti. Five hundred years ago or more the high chieftainess and wonderful sorceress, Haungaroa, trod these plains of tussock and cabbage-tree, trudging from tho Bay of Plenty to the Taup'o Country, seeking her brother, the explorer, Ngatoro-i-Rangi. "With her were her sister Kuiwai and several other women. Somewhere about, where the RotoruaGalatea road now crosses the plateau they halted for a meal, and Haungaroa was so hungry after hor journey that she continued eating long after the others had done. Two of her companions twitted her on her appetite, saying, " 0 Haungaroa. how long you are at your kail" and from their words came the name of ibis hungry prairie, Kaingn-roa, " The Place of Ihe Long Mea!." Haungaroa seems to have been a short-tempered dame, for she took tho joke as an insult, and straightway attacked the women, smiting them, with .many abusive words, alter the fashion of the ancient Maori. The women fled from her. and ever as Haungaroa pursued they girded up their garments and fled onwards. And then the sorceress with incantations " makutu'd " them ; they were transformed into ti-palms, which forever elude the pursuer. To-day, riding over those wide plains, you may see, in the distance, particularly in lowering misty weather, certain tall cabbage-trees which as you approach seem to recede into the distance; it may be that you are the victim of an optical delusion, but certain it is that you can nev-er quite reach those pillar-like palms with their witchr-looking frayed-out heads. They are the " Ti-Whakaaweawe," as the Maoris call them, the Elusive Palm Trees of the Kaingaroa. The Natives of Waiotapu and Galatea have told me of a certain historic cabbage tree which stands near the old trail across those plains from Waiotapu to the Rangitaiki. It is of huge size and its butt carved in curious fashion with the obsidian knives of the ancients ; fragments and flakes of those implements lie at- its foot, where the tapu men of old were accustomed to halt for the hair-cutting ceremony, which was no light matter to the rangatira Maori. It is a sacred tree, and must not be passed without the reciting of an appropriate short incantation to the genius loci. Riding across tho Kaingaroa to the Urewera Country via Galatea T have kept a look-out for that storied palm, a survey (hat extended for scores of miles over those rolling moors, dotted with slender wind-bowed palms, with hairy mops for heads, but the enchanted enrvcu tree was as elusive as angry Haungaroa's bedeviled Ti-\Vhakanweawe.

It was not far from the Kaingaroa. on the ferny bills between Rptoruaand Waiotapu, that the Arawa soldiers in 1870 bound to a tail cabbage-tree the body of the notorious half-caste Hauhau murderer, Baker M'Lean. Te Kooti's bugler, whom Captain Gilbert Mair had shot in a thrilling running fight. There th*e corpse of the execrated half-blood remained for months, desiccated mummy-like by the hot, dry summer of the pumice prairie. THE SUGAR TREE OF NGAI-TAHU. To our South Island Maoris the ti was something more than a landscape ornament,- and a shade for the tribal "tuahu," tho altar and place of divination and bewitchment. It furnished them with a saccharine food which was in its way an equivalent for the sugar cano of the tropics. About this time of the year the ti was ready lor the " kauru "-maker, tho sweet-tooth of Maoridom. The season of "lcana," or spring, was also the " wa-riiahi-kuuru," tho " time for sweettiheatworking "; and knuru-getting was tho chief industry in tho Wai-Pounamu,

and particularly on those Canterbury Plains, during tho month of November. These were the methods adopted, as described to me by tho old people of Ngai4ahu:Tho ti trees selected for tho purpose of kauru wero the-young ones, four to six feet high. These " ti-kouka." wero cut down close to tho root, and sometimes tho root also was taken, and after being cub into convenient lengths the bark and tho outer wood wero stripped off with small, (sharp axes until the heart or pith remained. This sappy and fibrous heart, containing tho sugary substance, was subjected to a sun-drying and cooking process. Tho roots, which contained the most sugar, required a longer treatment than the stem portions. Tho •ti pieces were spread out on platforms to dry in y the summer sun, sometimes for; several weeks; then the groat oven, the " umuti " was made. This earth-oven, many yards wide, was prepared in the usual way, with red-hot stones on which water was thrown to produce steam; the kauru stalks were packed in bundles in flax kits, soakod with water and laid in this oven and covered up. Tho cooking occupied all night: sometimes in the case of tho roots the oven was left untouched for about forty-oio-ht hours The process was attended with priestly ceremony, and the oven was-'" tapu." This tapu, in fact, extended to tho poople also, for certain restrictions were observed during tho steaming of tho kauru. The men of tho village were required to absent: themselves from their wives; a breach of this was liable to bring down upon the tapu-breakers quick punishment by club law. Such a "hara," a transgression, was invariably detected, says Hoani Taare Tikao, of Rapaki; if when tho " umu" was opened it was found that the kauru was not properly done, not cooked to tho right degree, it was known that some couple had disregarded the tapu of the umu-ti. and the offenders would quickly bo discovered bv/tho tohunga. Then, unless the culprits wero so powerful that they could defy the law, they would he " patu d, killed with a stono club. Such was the , penally of spoiling the tribal sweets When tho oven was uncovered', the kits of kauru, properly clone, were taken out and packed away. The cooking reduced the stuff to a kind of sweet flour, intermingled, however, with much woody fibre. "This floury substance, which was kept for winter use was often made into a sort of porridge by mixino- it with wafer. Often, however, it was eaten dry, a. Maori substitute for chewing gum. Tt was almost as dark •is liquorice, except, for the woody fibres, and a stick of this aboriginal liquorice was a popular sweetmeat. So fond oi •it were the .tattooed brown ladies of these narts that the North Islanders came to coin a facetious saying which made ungallaut allusion te tho size ol tho Ngai-Tahu women's mouths as the result of the kniini-stick chewing habit. There were usually two "cuttings" of the ti tree in the year, one in late October or November and one in Mare!;. The voung ti, after being cut, would shoot up again, similarly to the rnamaku fern-Tree, which was cultivated bv the Taranalti Natives in the old days' for the sake of its edible pnrts. Tho ti harvest marked the first foodgathering season of the Maori year. The March cutting would be followed by the weka-snaring season (.April), then the trapping of tho Kiore Maori, the native rat (May), and catching of the piharau or lamprey in June. Tho first "umu-ti" workers in New Zealand, says 11. T. Tikao wore the Hawea people, a dark curly-haired mco which preceded the Ngati-Mnmoo by hundreds of years.- They brought the knowledge of the sweet-tasting kauru with them from the tropic lands, and they taught it to succeeding generations. The " umu-ti " is known from end to end of Polynesia, from the Paumotus and the Gamhier Islands, in • the extreme oast, to Fiji in the west. Tt is associated with the strange fire-walking ceremony. Roots somewhat similar to that of'our ti were cooked in great quantities in some-of the island' 1 , particularly in Raintea. in the Society Group, which appears to have been the original *oat of the fire-wnlking rite, and in Rarotonga and Fiji, and the barefooted passage of tho priests and people over" the red-hot sumes seems to have been considered as giving added "inana." and efficacy to the eooking. And among our New Zealand" Maoris there aro lingering remembrances of this immeasurably ancient rite of their Asiatic-Polynesian ancestor;. —ORAKAU.