Karaka A Poisonous Food

Forest and Bird, Issue 308, 1 May 2003, Page 28

Karaka A Poisonous Food

GORDON ELL.

Maori planted orchards of this native tree and ate its poisonous fruit.

Story and pictures,

he glossy green karaka with its "| ona of golden fruit is deceptively attractive. The kernels of the fruit contain a strong poison which maims and kills. Nevertheless, karaka berries — kopi — were a significant food for early Maori. They planted orchards of the tree, which in part accounts for its widespread distribution today. Karaka belongs to a small family of trees — just five species — found in New Guinea, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia,

Queensland and New Zealand. Its distribution here is in warmer situations, usually in coastal forest, particularly in the North Island, but also on the South Island coast down to about Banks Peninsula and Westland, and on the Chathams group, 1000 kilometres to the east. Karaka grows slowly. Comparatively small trees, they rise to around 15 metres and may live several hundred years. The tree features in a number of Maori migration traditions, indicating its importance. It is said to have grown in

Hawaiiki, the ancestral home of Maori. The trees were brought from there to Aotearoa in the founding canoes. Karaka is not found in Polynesia beyond the Kermadec Islands, however, suggesting the traditions relate to local migrations of Maori tribes within New Zealand. Certainly, the tree was of such significance that Maori established orchards of them near their settlements. There are many old pa sites which still have a grove of ancient karaka trees nearby. In summer and early autumn, the prolific

yield of golden drupes makes identifying the tree simple. The fruit attracts the native pigeon which must digest the flesh and pass the poisonous kernel whole, before it kills. The poison is known to science as karakin. According to The Poisonous Plants of New Zealand by H.E. Connor, the effect of karakin on humans is to cause ‘paralysis preceded by violent spasms and convulsions’. Maori had an extended process to remove the poison from the kernels before eating them. Elsdon Best recounts several experiences in his Forest Lore of the Maori. In the Chatham Islands berries were

harvested, washed, then steamed in an earth oven ‘for some days. Then the berries were soaked and the pulp removed from the fruit. Baskets of the kernels were then soaked in a swamp for three weeks to leach out the poison. The process was not always successful; children too might eat the fruit in ignorance. The Maori treatment described by Elsdon Best included putting a gag in the sufferer’s mouth to protect the tongue and mouthparts from paroxysms. The victim was then wrapped and bound so body and limbs were rigid. The tortured body was then buried upright in the earth

with only the head exposed. Water was forced into the patient to induce perspiration; a steam bath followed exhumation. The results are not detailed though Best quotes William Colenso’s account of a twelve-year-old with limbs ‘dreadfully distorted and rigid, unable to move hand, foot, or body, who had to be fed by others, and have the position of his body frequently changed, day and night, in order that he might obtain a little ease. araka fruit was sometimes called in Maori, a name used on the Chatham Islands to describe the tree itself. Kopi were once extensive on the main island but have been sadly reduced by grazing stock. Their tangled skeletons are a feature on the windswept landscape. Groves of kopi were formerly carved with ‘dendroglyphs; sacred figures scored in the bark. Because of the slow growth of the tree, these markings survive from the time of the Moriori people, who developed a separate culture on the Chathams, prior to the invasion by Taranaki Maori in 1835. Hundreds, possibly thousands of these tree carvings have been lost with the death of the kopi trees. A few carved figures survive at the end of the former airstrip at Haupupu. In the 1980s, this patch of karaka forest was fenced from stock with assistance from Forest and Bird. With growing concern for the environment, some landowners on the Chathams have now fenced their surviving karaka. The near-skeletal trees have responded by growing a new mantle of shiny green leaves. — GORDON ELL is editor of Forest & Bird.