Poisonous Plant Yields Beverage.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 300, 18 December 1931, Page 8

Poisonous Plant Yields Beverage .

Nature Notes

By James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S. the poison in tutu has caused great loss among flocks and herds and a fairly large number of deaths amongst human beings, the Maoris made a pleasant beverage from the berries. They collected large quantities of the berries and extracted the juice, straining the poisonous seeds through a sieve at the bottom of small baskets. The juice was collected in calabashes, and was drunk with avidity. When visiting Mokoia Island, Lake Rotorua, forty-four years ago, Mr T. F. Cheeseman, an Auckland botanist, saw almost half the population collecting the berries and straining the juice. Almost every available receptacle in the little village was filled with the purple liquid. “ The sweet and pleasant taste,” Mr Cheeseman stated, “ was most refreshing after our tedious row across the lake.” The poison is in the young shoots, leaves and seeds. Sometimes the poisoning of stock that eat them is wholesale. A North Island settler lost forty-three head of cattle out of a herd of sixty.