Raglan writer Kate Evans talks to Joanna Wane about her obsession with New Zealand’s “green Easter eggs”.
It wasn't kindness that got New Zealand through the first Covid lockdown. It wasn't the lovely autumn weather or the Easter Bunny being declared an essential worker, although that certainly helped. It wasn't even "curve crusher" Ashley Bloomfield holding his nerve. It was feijoas.
Early fruiting varieties had just come into season – "those gloriously gritty gems that litter the ground", as someone wrote on Facebook, consoling an expat Kiwi trapped by border closures in the feijoa-free desert of Perth. And as the weeks unfolded, feijoas were all over the news. A family in Pukekohe made headlines with a 423g whopper (the average is just 50g) that had fallen off their tree. "Obviously there wasn't very much to do during the lockdown, so we've been watching it grow," said the owner.
A fortnight later, a feijoa shaped like a kiwi – the bird, not the fruit – was put up for auction on Trade Me. There was controversy over whether it actually looked more like a kākāpō, but it went for $50. The seller, who'd picked the feijoa while on a retreat in Ōtaki, described it as a "miraculous synchronicity" and said he'd donate the profits to charity.
What captured the true spirit of the feijoa, though, was the story of Nelson couple Geoff and Sue Cooper, who were supporting a refugee family from Myanmar and trying to make them feel less isolated without breaking their bubble. "We showed them how to eat a feijoa," said Sue. "They'd never come across one before."
Writer Kate Evans has spent a lot of time contemplating the way feijoas have become so embedded in our national identity, weaving threads of connection and creating sensory memories that instantly transport you back to childhood. There's nothing quite like their gloopy texture and a scent that's been likened to fine perfume
Growing up in Leigh, Evans and her two younger sisters, Monica and Tessa, used to sit under their parents' feijoa hedge with a spoon. "It's such a classic story," laughs Evans. "Dad loves them too. Mum, not so much. She's Australian."
A freelance journalist and nature writer, Evans spent a decade working offshore and now lives with her partner Sam McGlennon in Raglan, where their two young daughters, Amalia, 7, and Indigo, 5, are already expert feijoa foragers. Their partner in crime is Monica's daughter, Skye, who was born 36 hours before Indi and lives right next door.
"Feijoas have this powerful, time-transporting thing, which they totally had for me as an expat when I was away," says Evans, pouring two glasses of homemade feijoa fizz (submerge scooped-out feijoa skins in water with a bit of sugar and a dash of cardamom and leave to ferment for two days). "Even now, there's that certain feeling when you cut open the first one of the season. Mon and I were feeling it today, that transition to autumny clear air in the mornings and hot cross buns. Feijoas are the start of the cosy time."
Evans can tell you pretty much everything there is to know about our "green Easter eggs", as she calls them. For starters, the feijoa might be our unofficial national emblem, gorged on by generations of Kiwi kids during its brief but bountiful season, but it's not native to New Zealand — originating in South America and only making its way to Aotearoa barely a century ago.
The fact feijoas aren't tainted by a historical association with colonisation (here at least) only adds to their reputation, she reckons, as an egalitarian people's fruit that's often foraged or given away. The infamous "glut" and the fruit's short shelf life mean it can't compete with the likes of kiwifruit as a high-value commercial crop, although feijoas apparently grow better here than in their ancestral homelands in Brazil and Uruguay.
For the past few years, Evans has been immersed in the cultural and botanical history of the feijoa for a book she's writing, tracing its journey here and exploring our love affair with this strange fruit. "I've discovered fascinating stories that span history, archaeology, botanical exploration, indigenous knowledge, genetics and the invisible conversations that take place between plants and insects," she wrote, in an early description of the project on her website, katevans.org.
So far, her research has taken her to South America, the United States and Europe. She'd love to get to Azerbaijan and Georgia, which are among the few countries in the world where feijoas are widely grown. That's not looking likely now but she brought home a wealth of material from two pre-Covid trips in 2019.
Evans – often dressed in a pair of overalls lined with feijoa-print fabric she'd made especially for the occasion – documented her travels on her Facebook page, The Fellowship of the Feijoa, and @feijoafellowship on Instagram. Many of the stories she brought home with her are quite extraordinary. In Brazil, she retraced the feijoa's origins to an archaeological site in Santa Catarina, where it's believed the Southern Jê people were the first humans to eat feijoas when they arrived in the area some 4500 years ago.
A few months later, at the Berlin Herbarium, she inspected some of the first feijoa specimens sent to Europe around 200 years ago by a German naturalist who roamed Brazil and Uruguay on the back of a mule. In Cannes, she found the lost garden of Edouard André, a landscape gardener who introduced feijoas to the world after bringing seeds home from Uruguay. His 1898 article in the Revue Horticole, entitled "A New Fruit", was shared around the world, including in the New Zealand Herald.
"I found some records that in the early 1900s the sultan in Istanbul — I suppose it was Constantinople then — was growing feijoas and the head gardener wrote to [Edouard André], who'd brought them over, to ask why they weren't fruiting or flowering," says Evans.
"I also read all these letters from the guy who brought them into California; he was writing to people in Indonesia, South America and Russia. There was this network of nurserymen around the world exchanging exotic plants — there was a real mania for it at the time."
It was hearing about an obscure feijoa festival in Colombia that first drew Evans into the world of feijoa obsessives (past and present). A fluent Spanish speaker, she'd fallen in love with Latin America while travelling there in her early 20s. After several years of exchanging messages with the organiser on social media, she was welcomed as a celebrity guest at the Festival de la Feijoa in Tibasosa, a small town in the Andes.
For a self-described "feijoa nerd", it must have been heaven. In the grand colonial main square, feijoa-themed murals cover the walls and you can buy everything from feijoa-flavoured caramels and mermelada to Sabajon, a feijoa liqueur.
Feijoas aren't native to Colombia, either, but they're as mad about them as we are, preferring thin-skinned varieties that are usually eaten whole. In Tibasosa, 87-year-old Cecilia Salamanca de Ramirez had been selling feijoas at the festival since it began in the late-80s. The photos Evans took of her for a story she posted on Facebook went viral. "Do I like the feijoa? Of course!" Salamanca de Ramirez told her. "It's what's given me my bread every day. I like to eat it — and I like to see others enjoy it. I give thanks to my God for inventing the feijoa."
Locals were delighted that a fellow feijoa lover had travelled so far, says Evans, although they were bemused by her "weird combination" of feijoa and apple in the crumble she made at a cooking demonstration. She was invited to judge a feijoa dessert competition, won by a beautiful pale-green ice cream cake. And on the closing night, she was whirled down the "green carpet" to be presented with a wooden Feijoa de Oro (Golden Feijoa) trophy, dedicated to Kate Evans, escritora (writer).
"They kept saying 'Gracias por existir' to everyone — thank you for existing — in their dramatic radio-announcer voices," she says. "Apparently it's quite normal there to be celebrated simply for existing! Then one of the musicians on the stage behind me swept off his bowler hat and showed me the label: Made in Ashburton. It was intense."
A true labour of love, Evans' book is still a work in progress. Her research trips were part-funded by grants from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship and Creative New Zealand, and she also received a small amount of financial backing for the project from supporters on Patreon, a membership platform that supports the arts.
A regular contributor to New Zealand Geographic and a raft of international outlets, she's won a number of awards for science and environmental reporting, and was Feature Writer of the Year in the prestigious Voyager Media Awards.
At home in Raglan, her office is a 100-year-old single railwayman's cabin, relined by Monica's partner, Manu. On display is an 1899 drawing of a feijoa plant by Matilda Smith, the first official artist for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.
In a story she wrote for the Scientific American, two New Zealand scientists advocated for the inclusion of traditional indigenous terms for plants and flowers as part of their official scientific name. The Kaingang tribe in Santa Catarina, where she visited the archaeological site on her trip to Brazil, call feijoas "kanekrein".
Feijoa trees are dotted around the hectare of rambling communal land she and Sam bought in 2016 with Evans' sister Monica and her partner, and share with a wwoofer, a flock of free-range chickens and a handful of alpacas that keep down the grass.
For generations, indigenous people in Brazil have made feijoa tea to treat all sorts of ailments, including diabetes. High in vitamin C, feijoas also have proven antifungal properties.
What makes them so special for Evans, though, is the way they are anchored in time — you can't buy a feijoa out of season. And, unlike the globally ubiquitous blueberry or strawberry, there simply aren't that many around.
"I like to ask a lot of questions and I love that there could be so many questions from this one tiny thing," she says. "And in the process of answering them, you discover all these different tangents that I become obsessed with and then write articles about that don't even fit in the book. Now, I have all these contacts who are Amazonian archaeologists and spent all this time learning about being a botanist."
Many of the stories she covers as a science journalist highlight the damage being wrought on our natural environment and a grim forecast for the future, but she sees the danger in becoming too overwhelmed by a sense of loss. “I guess I’m more into cataloguing what we have now. And it feels wholesome and good to write about feijoas somehow.”
