Nikau palm

The Essence

"Rhopalostylis sapida, the nīkau, is the only palm native to mainland New Zealand and the world's southernmost palm, reaching 44°18′S on the Chatham Islands. It grows in coastal and lowland forest through the North Island and, in the South Island, from the Marlborough Sounds and Nelson south to Ōkārito in the west and Banks Peninsula in the east, with further populations on the Chatham and Pitt Islands; it was also the sole member of the palm family to survive the ice ages on mainland New Zealand. A solitary, unarmed palm growing to about 15 m, it carries stiffly upright fronds up to 3 m long above a smooth, distinctively bulging crownshaft, the upright, shuttlecock-shaped crown earning it the nicknames shaving brush palm and feather duster palm. Tightly packed lilac-to-pink flowers appear from November to April, and the fruits take almost a year to ripen red, when they are an important food for kererū (the New Zealand pigeon) and kākā. Named sapida — Latin for savoury — for its edible qualities, the nīkau is deeply woven into Māori life, and its silhouette is echoed in Ian Athfield's nīkau-palm columns at Wellington Central Library. Chatham Islands plants differ in their juvenile form, larger fruits and a thicker covering of fine hairs on the fronds, while plants from the South Island and the North Island's offshore islands, with larger, more gracefully arching fronds, are popular in cultivation."

For Māori, the bases of the inner leaves and the young flower clusters are a traditional food, eaten raw or cooked, and the rito (heart) a delicacy only rarely taken, since harvesting it kills the tree; in rongoā medicine the heart served as a laxative, seen as especially important before childbirth. Food was wrapped in the leaves for cooking, and the old fibrous leaves were used for kete (baskets), floor mats and waterproof thatch; ripe berries were strung into necklaces and, in the 19th century, even used as ammunition for shooting birds. The name cabbage palm, referring to the edible heart, was first used in the journals of James Cook and Joseph Banks, and nīkau hearts were an important subsistence food for Bohemian settlers at Puhoi.