Cabbage tree an icon in two cultures

MARGIE THOMSON talks to Philip Simpson about his definitive botanical and cultural history of the cabbage tree.

In my own childhood," writes Philip Simpson in his book Dancing Leaves: The story of New Zealand's cabbage tree, ti kouka (Canterbury University Press, 59.95), "the cabbage tree stood at the roadside marking the boundary of our farm. We children would eat its leaf hearts, climb it and have races to it.

"We lived at Uruwhenua, meaning the gateway to the land. Our district was the gateway into the beautiful Takaka Valley from over the Takaka Hill. Our cabbage tree embodied uruwhenua: in the morning, walking down the road to catch the school bus, it was the beginning of the outside world; in the evening it was home.

"It was a place. Now it is gone and that patch of roadside has lost its name."

Simpson is a botanist who has written a rich, poignant tribute to the symbolically laden cabbage tree, which the Maori call ti kouka. His is a rare, possibly unique, achievement: to take an object from nature
and use it to trace not only a botanical and evolutionary history, but also the story of that object's place within two cultures.

The cabbage tree, as one of Simpson's respondents notes, is "a real kiwi." From the earliest days of European colonisation its upstretched arms and dancing mop of leaves have symbolised our natural landscape, and ourselves as a nation.

Since 1769 when Sydney Parkinson completed his painting of a cabbage tree aboard the Endeavour, artists have drawn and painted these trees. Poets have described them and anthropomorphised them ("They're a bit silly and unsophisticated. They stand together in the middle of the paddock surrounded by adversity. They pop up again when the going gets tough, their buried hearts forever full of hope ... "). A wide range of organisations and businesses have co-opted their distinctive shape for use in logos.

Maori have an abiding relationship with the different varieties of cabbage tree as a virtual first aid kit (it offers medicines for everything from cuts, constipation and colic, to diarrhoea and heart ailments), as a source of strong fibre, and as a spiritual icon, important in both birth (placentas were buried at its foot) and death (Far North Maori, for instance, believed that the spirits of the dead would rest in the ti).

It was an important food source, providing kouka, the leaf hearts, wholesome yet bitter and a good accompaniment for fatty food; and also kauru, the sugar-rich rhizome or root. "Ki te kore he mara ti o te tangata, he tangata mate tena (If a man has no ti plantation then he is in a poor way)," according to one Maori proverb.

Yet in the late 1980s a different image of the cabbage tree began, frighteningly, to emerge. The dancing leaves fell away, and around the country the trees became bare skeletons before finally tumbling to the
ground. Sudden Decline, this epidemic came to be called, and Simpson, then a botanist with the Department of Conservation, was asked to coordinate a research programme into the problem.

What he and others found, along with evidence of a parasitic bacteria, was that changes to the tree's natural habitats had created the conditions for the epidemic. Already laden with symbolism, cabbage
trees came to mean something else again: vulnerability, and a sad expression of the relationship between people and the land.

"Sudden Decline may well prove to be an indicator: that natural and human-induced disruption of ecosystems and processes has its limits, even for species seemingly most capable of withstanding disaster. We can see this with the cabbage tree because it is out in the paddocks for all to see, but the impacts on other species may be more insidious," Simpson says.

One thing led to another. After that research project Simpson was employed by the Maori studies department at Victoria University to produce a report on Maori perspectives on ti, and then, in 1996, he received a Stout Research Fellowship and began to write this book.

First up, he fired off a "request for information" leaflet for publication in all our major newspapers, asking the public, essentially, "Is there a cabbage tree in your life?" He was overwhelmed by the response.

"It was very touching. I couldn't wait to get to work each day to open my letters from people all around the country. There were letters from people whose close partners had died, people who had come here from overseas - people from all walks of life were sharing their experiences with me in stories, photographs and poems."

A lot of those responses have found their way into his book, or provided a trail for him to follow around the country, which he has traversed in search of cabbage tree habitats and histories. Letters to museums and historical societies resulted in Simpson having a ticket to get in the back door and rummage around in displays ... "That was neat, and I did make some surprising discoveries. At Waimate Museum I found what I believe to be a perfect stone for thumping the cooked stems flat so they could be carried home."

Simpson acknowledges the difficulties, both real and perceived, of a Pakeha writing about things important to Maori, but he has done his best and, once it was clear that his interest was conservation, he received huge support on his journey, or hikoi, of discovery. The result is that the Maori story of the cabbage tree is given the same weight as the Pakeha scientific version.

There are many stories from both Pakeha and Maori of trees that no longer exist - of entire areas that once used to support glorious stands, where now there is no trace whatsoever.

"The overwhelming conclusion about the ecology of the cabbage tree in New Zealand is how remarkably few places exist where the trees can be said to be growing in their natural environment," Simpson laments.

Restoration of the habitat is the important thing, he concludes, and he offers several suggestions as to how this can be done. He is clear, though, that this issue bridges the human cultures of Aotearoa: "In Pakeha terms this means restoring ecological health; in Maori terms it means restoring the mauri.

"Either way, people restore cabbage trees."