Bush Tucker

Karamu (Coprosma) berries. All of the 5 species of N.Z coprosmas are edible. Quite tasty. Make good juice. Coprosma is part of the coffee family, and you can make coffee out of the seeds.

Rimu berries (except the blue bit).

Kahikatea berries (except the blue bit).

Ponga you can eat the white pith inside the branches. You have to be fairly desperate (i.e. in a survival situation to do this) its really stringy.

Spaniard you can eat the roots of spaniard plants. You would need to be really desperate though! You get to the roots by pulling the plant over by a rope. The goldminers in Otago did this sometimes.

Bull kelp is edible. One Maori recipe is to cook Kawhai in a slip open peice of bull kelp.

Mermaids necklace is edible as well.

Raupo The roots are edible. The pollen is as well. Maori used to make soup out of it, and small cakes.

Braken fern foots are edible. They are carcinogenic in the long run though, so its not recommended that you eat these, they are also really tough, and require a lot of beating and soaking apparently.

Supplejack The tips of the vine are edible. They look like asparagus.

Bush lawyer The berries are edible.

Reinga lily The roots are edible.

Hen and Chickens Fern The new shoots are edible. They taste spicy.

Kawakawa The berries are edible, when orange. You can also make tea out of the leaves, which act as a stimulant.

Manuka you can make tea out of the leaves. Honey from its flowers acts as an antiseptic and fungicide.

Pepperwood dried and crushed, the leaves make a spicy seasoning for food. The leaves are really peppery, Maori mothers from some Iwi used to rub the leaves on their breasts to wean their babies. If you taste the leaves you can see why even the deer won’t eat them!

Bush mans toilet paper The leaves are slightly antiseptic so they make good bandages. They can be used as toilet paper as well! Don’t eat it though, its highly poisonous.

Kauri the gum was chewed as chewing gum. Careful about standing on the roots of Kauri though, it can really damage them. the best place to get the sap is where a boardwalk goes over the roots.

Lemonwood The gum can be chewed to give you nice breath. Maori used to make oil out of the leaves as a perfume.

Mairehau Maori used to make the leaves into perfume. Don’t rub it straight onto your skin though, it burns your skin!

Mokimoki or Fragant fern only smells when dried. It smells like marzipan. Maori used it to perfume their houses.

Don’t eat them unless you are sure you’ve got the plant correctly identified.