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This is one of the pages written in the prototype stage of this web site (No. 40 in the original sequence, first on line in 2009), which has been transferred to the newer format with some additions to the already extensive text.
Introduction.
The aruhe in traditional Māori poetry, proverbs and life.
Words and expressions connected with aruhe and rauaruhe.
 This fern is found also in other parts of the Pacific, Australia and Southeast Asia, and is closely related to the bracken fern of other parts of the world, Pteridium aquilinum, of which it was once considered a variety or subspecies. It assumed enormous importance in Aotearoa because of the lack of widely available sources of carbohydrate, and the difficulty of producing sufficient kumara and other introduced root crops in sufficient quantities to feed a growing population -- or to grow these at all in many parts of the country. Perhaps to underline its role as the "staff of life", the word aruhe, the direct reflex of the Proto Polynesian term for ferns of this kind, was used to denote the rhizome itself in mainland New Zealand, where the frond and thus the visible plant as a whole was designated rauaruhe, literally aruhe-leaf. The newly-emerged Spring shoots, like the one pictured on the left, were known as kōnehu or panenehu.
Preparing the food to eat was an arduous process consisting of digging it up (not at all easy as the best roots [i.e. rhizomes, properly speaking] can be a metre underground), removing the hard outer layer, soaking and pounding the inner part to separate the starch from the fibre as much as possible (which usually resulted in plenty of the indigestable fibre remaining), and then cooking it. It was an acquired taste, but it seems that most people forced to eat it out of necessity got to be reasonably fond of it. Reports of early outside observers varied greatly, some finding it quite pleasant to eat (no doubt the skill of the cook and the observer's own taste in food also greatly influenced these perceptions); the "wild food" writer Andrew Crowe, however, is inclined to agree with the verdict of an 1842 account which noted that "a very good imitation might be made with a rotten stick, especially if slightly pounded, to which it bears a striking resemblance, both in taste and smell" (Field Guide, p. 109). Captain Cook found it slightly more palatable. During his East Coast soujourn in 1769 he remarks that after the roasted roots were pounded until the bark and dry outside fell off, "what remains is a soft substance, somewhat clammy and sweet, not unpleasing to the taste, but mixed with three or four times its quantities of strings and fibres, which are very disagreeable; these were swallowed by some, but spit out by far the greater number, who has baskets under them to receive the the rejected part of what had been chewed" (quoted by Elsdon Best, Forest Lore, pp. 76-7). Best also quotes a haka describing the effect of eating aruhe on the tongue (p. 80):
He aha te kai e ora ai te tangata?
He pipi, he aruhe, ko te aka o tuwhenua
Ko te kai e ora ai te tangata
Mātoetoe ana te arero i te mitikanga
Me he arero kurī -- au!
That is, the foods that keep men alive are pipi and aruhe; the tongue will be roughened by licking [the fibres], just like a dog's tongue. Probably the cakes made entirely from the meal were easier on the mouth and palate.
The preparation and cooking of the fern root and young shoots were very important, as all parts of the plant are toxic, as well as being carcinogenic. However, according to Andrew Crowe, the traditional ways of processing aruhe and rauaruhe removed the carcinogens, although H.E. Connor notes that Japanese research has shown that there, at least, the processing of the young shoots (which are particularly rich in carcinogens) "reduces, but does not eliminate, the carcinogenic activity" of this popular and widely-eaten food (Poisonous Plants, p. 192).
Connor also notes that "Poisoning by bracken is frequent in cattle in New Zealand; serious losses occur in the King Country even now [1977]." This is a great encouragement to me to let it spread unchecked at the western end of the Language Garden (see photograph at the bottom of this page), where it first appeared unbidden a few years ago -- this is the main point of entry for marauding animals from neighbouring properties, and if the cattle eat enough of the fern it may encourage their owners to repair or put up fences along their river boundaries -- it may of course also earn us a citation from the District or Regional Council for harbouring a noxious pest, but since the rauaruhe is a native plant bearing a well-attested heritage name, and cannot be cultivated (it grows where it chooses, and nowhere else), this surely is justification for letting it thrive in Te Māra Reo!
The Aruhe and Rauaruhe in Traditional Māori Poetry, Proverbs and Life.
Various parts of the plant had significant medicinal, symbolic, spiritual and magical properties, many of which are listed in Murdoch Riley's Herbal (pp. 389-393). In the cattle-oriented colonial and post-colonial world, however, rauaruhe has come to be regarded as a menacing weed -- of sufficiently high status to be the first listed (with its photograph as the frontispiece) in Parham and Healy's Common Weeds in New Zealand (1976). Nonetheless, apart from its value as a food, the stout midribs of the fronds were used to make lattice fences, and it is an excellent accelerant for fire, particularly when the fronds are starting to dry. This is the referent to an often-used metaphor in New Zealand English "the fire is in the fern" (thought to be an "ancient Maori saying", but I have yet to find it mirrored precisely in an old Maori text), meaning that mischief is afoot, and it's too late to try to control it. Left for nature to take its course, fernland would eventually be overrun by mānuka and other shrubs and plants, as a prelude to land being reclaimed by forest. This process was subverted by burning off the old fronds, which fertilized the land, got rid of potential invaders, and ensured a supply of aruhe for the next season.
The origin of the aruhe is attributed to Haumia, the god of uncultivated foods. Along with four of his brothers, he conspired to separate their parents, Rangi, the sky and Papa, the earth. A sixth brother, Tawhirimātea, the god of wind and storms, opposed the plan, and after it succeeded vented his fury. Haumia burrowed into the ground, taking the form of the aruhe, but his hair, the fronds, was seen on the surface by one of his co-conspirators, Tümatauenga, the god of men and war, who pulled him out and ate him. Thus since then, men have done the same. The mōkehu (young shoots) are Haumia's children, and gave rise in turn to the sandflies and mosquitos which the fronds harbour (there is a good brief account of this in Margaret Orbell's Encyclopedia of Maori Myth and Legend, pp. 49-50).
Despite its divine origin, the stories proverbs and traditional chants which mention the plant and its roots sometimes reveal a certain ambiguity, evident very early on in a tradition concerning the Horouta canoe, which brought back from Hawaiki a cargo of kumara for planting in the newly-settled land. During a stopover on Ahuahu [Great Mercury] island, off the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, one of the women on board dug up some fern root and stowed it away, unknown to anyone else, except the precious cargo. The kumara were so upset that they raised a terrible storm, which the tohunga divined was caused by the woman's impropriety. She was thrown overboard, which calmed the weather, but didn't save the ship, as the miscreant managed to overturn it before she drowned. The cargo, however, was salvaged (see Te Rangi Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, p. 57, for further details.). The unfortunate woman was named Kanawa, a tree with sweet-smelling flowers in the Polynesian homeland, but given to a variety of kūmara in Aotearoa -- just possibly because of this dramatic incident.
The only direct references to rauaruhe as such in Nga Mōteatea are in a particularly beautiful song in which it is used as an image of desolation or loss:
E Tama' ë! He tangi aha tō tangi?
He tangi anō rā, he whakaāhuru kore,
Te tū nō tō kiri i te tara rauaruhe.
O Tama", this crying is your cry for what?.
One cries, of course, when there is no shelter,
Or the skin is pricked with a sharp-pointed fern leaf splinter.
[Te Ma-pere-tahi, He Oriori mö Ta-maunga-o-te-rangi - A Lullaby for Ta-maunga-o-te-rangi, NM 209 Vol.3, pp. 42-43]
And again,
Kuhu atu koe ngā rauaruhe kino
I roto Karangaroa, kia ui i roto,
'Ko hea tēnei whenua?" ...
Enter the wild fern-lands
Among the hills of Karangaroa, pondering the while
'What land must this be?' ...
[Te Ma-pere-tahi, He Oriori mō Ta-maunga-o-te-rangi - A Lullaby for Ta-maunga-o-te-rangi, NM 209 Vol.3, pp. 44-5]
In another powerful song, the image of the aruhe is used to convey the same idea as the Scottish "mess of pottage":
I hokona ai Te Tira Kino mö te kōpaki kiore,
I hokona ai Maunga-Rake ki te poi aruhe rā, ē.
When Tira-kino was traded for a morsel of rat;
When Maunga-rake was traded for a piece of fern-root meal.
[Tama-i-Tokotokona, He Waiata Kï Mökai - A Song of Degradation, NM 207 Vol.3, pp. 32-33]
Among the various songs in Apirana Ngata's collection, the whole range of emotions and qualities associated with aruhe may be found. There is the drudgery of preparing it for food by pounding with the specially-made hardwood beaters: "Taumatahia te aruhe poipoi" --'Twas a burden to make a fern-root meal [NM 270, V3 pp.444-5]; its value as a source of vigour and strength: "Kai ana mai Rongo-ai-kino i te kaka aruhe / I whatumanawa" -- Yonder is Rongo-ai-kino eating fern root / To fortify himself within. [NM 262 V3 402-3]; and its symbolizing of the power hidden within humble things: "Patua ki te aruhe, rūnā ki te rama" -- Beaten with fern root used in the torch light [a reference to the burning of the house of Te Ati Hapai in Hawaiki, NM 300 V3, pp. 596-7].
These latter attributes of the aruhe, its reliability as a food source year-round, unlike the fickle and seasonal nature of the more highly sought-after foods, are highlighted in the satirical song "He Tangi mō te Matenga o ngā Kai" by Horomona Hapai, telling the lowland women to gather food from the sea and the men to go inland where the reliable food is to be found, after their supposedly superior crops failed on the lowlands:
E tama mā, e!
E ahu ki uta, rä,
Ki ngā kai a Toi'
I mahue i muri rā,
Te aruhe, te mamaku,
Te pou o te tangata, ë.
O ye sons all! Go ye inland
To the food of Toi'
Which he left behind;
The fern-root, the tree-fern,
As sustenance for mankind. [NM 170, Vol. 2 ,pp. 318-319]
The same range of attitudes, from ambivalence to admiration, can be found in the proverbs, but the overall view can perhaps be summed up in two sayings, describing it respectively as "te aka o te tüwhenua" -- the creeper of the solid earth [M&G, 2263], and "te ariki noanoa" -- the commoner aristocrat [M&G, 64]. It symbolizes the advantage of avoiding risk taking and having a steady, if prosaic job:
Ka ora karikari aruhe, ka mate tākiri kākā.
'The fernroot diggers enjoy good health while the parrot snarers sicken.' [M&G 1054]
and also strength and vitality. Deprived of it, a community is imperilled:
Whano! Kia motu te taka o te roi.
'Forward! Cut the fibres of the fernroot' -- a battle cry promising total destruction to the enemy [M&G 2658]
On the other hand, although it is the food for war, it also symbolizes the inadequacy of isolated individualism:
He kō aruhe ka taea e te tangata kotahi, te whawhai nā te tokomaha.
'One man can dig fernroot but many are needed for warfare.' [M&G 485]
One saying, however, encapsulates this forced respect beautifully. Hawaiiki, or heaven, is the place where the kumara is as plentiful and accessible as the rauaruhe:
Hawaiki te whenua e tupu noa mai te kūmara i roto i te rarauhe.
'Hawaiki is the land where the kümara grows spontaneously among the bracken.' [M&G 329]
However, the abandonment of the traditional diet with aruhe as a major component in the second half of the nineteenth century did not result in Aotearoa's being transformed into Hawaiiki. In many communities, especially as conflict with foreign settlers and the Colonial government afflicted major areas of formerly concentrated Maori population, communities which had already been depleted by the inter-tribal wars of the previous generation turned to much less satisfactory famine foods, like fermented sweet corn. This was noted with dismay by a writer on the population crisis in the newspaper Te Manuhiri Tuarangi and Maori Intelligencer, No. 13, 10 Jan 1861:
E ki ana, i mua i pai te kai a te Maori, he kumara, he aruhe, he pohue, he manu, he kaingaru, he tuna, he mataitai; e mea ana ano, i kaha rawa te tangata i tera wa. Inaianei, kua mahue te aruhe, me te pohue, kua kore te kaingaru, kua iti haere te manu, kua iti haere hoki te ngaki o te kumara, kua tahuri i te tangata ki te kaanga piro. Ka nui te kino o tena kai, kino whakaharahara.
Another reason is bad food. It is said that formerly the food of the Maori was good, viz., the kumara, fern root, pohue, birds, rats, eels, salt fish: and it is said that man was stronger during that period. At the present time, the fern root and the pohue have been left off, the rats have disappeared, the birds have diminished, the kumaras have almost ceased to be cultivated, and men have turned to putrid corn. Great indeed is the badness of that exceedingly bad food. [p. 10 - translation in original]
To that writer, at least, the merits of the sturdy aruhe and the nutritious Southeast Asian rat far outweighed the advantages of the then-modern convenience foods like "rotten corn"!
Words and expressions connected with aruhe and rauaruhe
There is an extensive lexicon associated with both aruhe and rauaruhe. Some of the terminology has been noted above, and Elsdon Best has a very comprehensive collection in his Forest Lore. Most of the terms included in the Williams Dictionary not already mentioned are noted below. They underline the importance of the plant, and especially the rhizome, in sustaining the local population in Aotearoa for several centuries after its discovery and settlement by Polynesian explorers.
The plant itself:
Rauaruhe, the plant, especially the fronds
Rārahu, Rahurahu, Rarauhe, Manehu, Mārohi
Tākaka (also, fibres in the rhizome, cf. Mākaka)
Metaphorical names for the plant and/or rhizome:
Aka o tūwhenua, Aka o te whenua "Root of the mainland"
Haumia-roa, Haumia-tiketike "Long Haumia, Lofty Haumia" in reference to the association with the god Haumia, noted above.
Te Peka o Haumia, Peka "Haumia's firewood" (peka, "firewood, faggot")
Stages of growth:
Mōkehu, the young fronds, with particular reference with the powdery down that covers them (mōkehu is also the name of a white claystone)
Konehu, Māhunu, Makehu, Pananehu, young shoots
Tope, fresh growth after the old fronds have been burnt off
Rotari, Taukuao, young aruhe not yet fit to dig for food
Parts of the plant:
Kākaka, stem of the frond (also a lattice made using these)
Aruhe; also Kōwauwau, Mākaka, Mārohi, Mohanithe, Putuputu, Roi, edible fern rhizome itself
Aukaha, the fibre in the rhizome
Culinary attributes of the rhizome:
Huirau, rhizomes of a special quality, eaten by warriors
Kōauau, Para, Tukurenga, good quality rhizomes
Arero-parera, Pehapeha, Kakanui, Pakakohi, Pārara, Tūākura (reddish brown), rhizomes of inferior quality
Katiwera, badly roasted rhizomes
Other attributes of the rhizome:
Kōhuruhuru, hairy on top and smooth below
Māpara (a term for the resin of Kahikatea and some other trees), rhizomes with brownish coloured flesh
Moheke, thick rhizomes
Paitu, rhizomes with coarse fibres
Paranui, rhizomes with many coarse fibres
renga, mealy aruhe
Varietal names:
Pāpāwai, Pāpaka (possibly having dark flesh, like the potato given this name), Parahou, Puahou, Pāwhati
Harvesting :
Pākihi, to dig for aruhe, also, a place where aruhe has been dug, and a general term for open country
Tāwaha, a place where fern has been dug; also, a garden bed
Tokitoki, a wooden implement for digging aruhe and cultivating gardens
Kohiti, kowhiti, a place where aruhe has been dug (also "to pull out")
Uses (non-culinary):
Neti, Nene, A toy dart ogten made from the frond stalks, thrown so as to glide along the ground
Kākaka, a lattice fence made from the stems of the fronds
Pitopito, an amulet consisting of a small piece of aruhe worn suspended from the neck, as a protection against minor ailments like headaches and colds
Processing:
Aku, to scrape the bark of the rhizome after roasting and before pounding
Patu, to pound the aruhe; patu tākaukau, to beat carefully so the meal is not pounded into the fibres
kōhere, to pound the aruhe into a cake, and a cake made from pounded aruhe
Morenga, pestle or club for pounding aruhe; also Ngahiri, Patō, Tuki, Poutuki, Pōtuki
Paoi, wooden beater
Kurutangi, stone beater
Products (Culinary):
Komeke, pounded aruhe
Meke, a cake made from pounded aruhe
Parehe, a cake of meal from aruhe
Aruhe puhunga, aruhe kept for several days after roasting (pūhunga, "put aside")
Storage and transport:
Katihi, Rangitihi, a stack of aruhe
Tutara, a framework of sticks for supportig bundles of aruhe; Tireki, to stack aruhe on a framework of sticks
Tārai, a basket for aruhe; Whakatihi, a basket of aruhe (Te Rarawa)
Mātā, a receptacle packed with preserved aruhe or other foods
Hoki atu ki runga ~ Back to top of page.
Rauaruhe, Te Mära Reo. This is spring growth in 2009 -- the tallest fronds are over 2 metres high |
Detail of fronds of Pteridium esculentum - Rauaruhe
(Lake Hawea, Otago. Photo: (c) John Sawyer, (c) NZPCN)
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Tip of newly unfolding frond of Pteridium esculentum - Rauaruhe
(Stokes Valley, Wellington. Photo (c) Jeromey Rolfe, NZPCN) |
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