The Mounga-mounga (Lygodium articulatum) is the delight of persons camping out. It has a stem like small twine, which depends from the trees in immense bundles of spiral coils. Bunches of it make capital bedding, being, in fact, a natural spring-mattress.
The Tupakihi (Coriaria ruscifolia) is a shrub growing chiefly on poor open land. The whole plant is highly astringent, but is also said to contain a narcotic principle. Cattle occasionally eat it, and get poisoned. It bears bunches of juicy berries which are wholesome to eat, but upon them is a seed that is dangerously full of the poisonous principle. The beverage called tutu, which the old Maori esteemed, was made from the berries of this plant. When it was boiled with a certain seaweed (Porphyra) a nutritious jelly was formed. Tutu was probably not universally known among the Maori, but only to certain tribes. It appears to have been intoxicating, for warriors who required a "drop of somethink short" were accustomed to imbibe it on the eve of battle.
New Zealand is well-known to be a great place for ferns. They exist in incredible profusion everywhere. Botanists have enumerated a hundred and thirty indigenous species, of which some forty are peculiar to the country. We are always sending roots, seeds, and dried species home, but I cannot attempt to catalogue them. Several kinds resembling that beautifully delicate fern called the maidenhair are among our commonest species. Their luxuriance is astonishing. They cover acres and acres of ground in the bush, and come up to one's waist and armpits.
The Tuakura (Dicksonia squarrosa) and the Ponga (Cyathea dealbata) are the two principal varieties of fern-tree. Groves of them, overshadowing some lonely creek, at the bottom of a wild, wooded gully, are indeed a sight to see. Growing to twenty, thirty, or forty feet in height, the graceful drooping fronds that spread around a single tree form a natural arbour, capable of sheltering a number of persons.
The Raurau (Pteris aquilina, var. esculenta) is a fern of the nature of English bracken. It covers all the better-class open lands, and occurs among the undergrowth of the bush. It sometimes grows very large, the fronds overtopping one's head as one walks or rides through it. The root is a Maori edible.
The ivy-ferns, climbing-ferns, or creeper-ferns (Polypodia, sp., Hymenophylla, sp.), are very beautiful. They are everywhere in the bush, ascending to the tops of the tallest trees, twining on every limb, and throwing out bunches of fronds to hide it. Some have broad, glossy leaves as big as a table-top; others are digitate, pedatisect, tripinnate, and all the rest of it, or assume strange new shapes, like that of the kidney-fern (Trichomanes reniforme), for instance.
Like the ferns, the mosses of the country are legion in number, and marvellously luxuriant in growth. They, too, are everywhere. Great masses of moss form hanging-gardens on the trees; for, collecting a quantity of detritus and moisture, a sort of soil is formed, in which small ferns, tawhera, orchids, plants of various kinds, and fungi, flourish. In and about these hanging-gardens, these ferneries high up upon the great trees, are the homes and habitations of birds, rats, bees, beetles, lizards, and butterflies.
The Harakeke or Korati (Phormium tenax) is the justly celebrated New Zealand flax. It is plentiful everywhere, on bush-land and open-land, rich soil and poor soil, hill and dale, from the Reinga to the Bluff. Throughout the North you cannot go a hundred yards in any direction without seeing a clump of it. In many districts of both islands it covers hundreds of acres entirely.
Flax resembles the English flag, or iris, in appearance, but the blades are thicker, heavier, and glossy. Usually, from four to six feet long, in favourable situations they grow to ten or twelve feet. The colour is a bright green, variegated in some of the species with white, yellow, or red. The plant grows in dense clumps, or bushes, and from the centre of each root rises a tall stem bearing flowers, white, yellow, salmon, flesh-pink, red, in different varieties. The flowers are peculiarly rich in honey; and Maori children are fond of sucking them. The resulting seed is oily and resinous, the seed-stems being commonly used for torches.
The leaves of the harakeke are composed of a strong fibre, which ranks next to silk in degree of tenacity. The whole plant is impregnated with gum, quantities of which are found about the base of the leaves. The gum is astringent, and the root is rich in tannin. This fresh gum was used by the Maori for every purpose of cement and glue. The root had its place in their pharmacopeia.