Kumarahou Making a Comeback Beside Ohiwa Harbour

Forest and Bird, Issue 299, 1 February 2001, Page 40

Kumarahou Making a Comeback Beside Ohiwa Harbour

he bright yellow flowers of kumarahou are replacing gorse around the shoreline and edges of Ohiwa Harbour, in the eastern Bay of Plenty. Maurice Walker, a resident near the harbour, burnt a large infestation of gorse three years ago and to his amazement out of the ashes grew hundreds of kumarahou seedlings. He contacted the local Forest and Bird nursery caretaker, Meg Collins, who potted up many of them. Once the shrubs were established, she distributed them around the harbour edge properties, and in Whakatane District Council’s rehabilitated reserve known as the ‘pumice pit’ In spring, many of these new groves of kumarahou burst into flower, adding to the sparse natural distribution of them in the district. Pomaderris kumerahou, or golden tainui, is found naturally in Northland and some parts of the Bay of Plenty, but can be obtained commercially as an interesting and spectacular garden plant. It prefers clay, barren sites, and is usually found in low scrub or roadside banks. Unfortunately when flowering

finishes it looks rather an uninteresting woody shrub, and can easily be mown off by over enthusiastic roadside mowing contractors. According to a Maori tradition, the flowering of kumarahou was used as a marker for the tribes to plant kumara, when risks of frosts had passed. It was also

used as a relief for lung and chest complaints. The leaves are said to make a type of beer with an unusual bitter taste but a remarkably sweet aftertaste. The kauri gumdiggers of the north also used the leaves to make a soapy lather for washing. So the plant became locally known as ‘gumdiggers soap’.

Another kumarahou Pomaderris hamiltonii has a pale yellow flower. This plant is on the threatened and endangered list and is found naturally in small stands about Warkworth and on the west coast of the Firth of Thames. — Meg Collins, Eastern Bay of Plenty.