Johanna Knox - A Foragers Treasury: A New Zealand Guide to Finding and Using Wild Plants

Introduction

The deeper you go into your whakapapa,
the easier it is to connect with all things.

Ruby Solly, in conversation with Kahu
Kutia in The Pantograph Punch , June 2020

Aotearoa New Zealand is a land of foragers. According to my mum, my own foraging life began at the age of about three when I unexpectedly squatted in the middle of my grandmothers garden and ate a pansy. I recall adoring pansies with their little monster faces, so perhaps I was thinking, Ill eat you up, I love you so. Then again, I might simply have been exhibiting the instincts to pick and test that fire in so many childrens minds.

I grew up visiting my grandparents and aunt at taki Beach on weekends and holidays. We gathered pipi, and took home empty shells, driftwood, sea glass, pussy willows and toetoe. I was aware of our whakapapa to the whenua there our ties to Ngti Raukawa ki te Tonga, as well as to Ngti Kahu ki Tauranga further north but I didnt know back then what that could or should mean for me. Then my grandfather died and my grandmother moved to Auckland.

We lived in Maungaraki, a raw, new bush-clad subdivision in the western hills of Te Awa Kairangi/the Hutt valley. Our section offered plenty of flora to explore, both native and introduced. My father, Fred Knox, worked hard to create a garden and orchard there. My mother, Mary Knox, was a busy environmental activist, continually dragging my sister Andrea and me to protests, fundraising stalls and meetings. A Pkeh back-to-nature movement was in full swing, and I was entranced by some of its manifestations particularly the herbal medicine and natural-body-care revivals.

As a child, I embarked on my own projects. I made creams, washes, poultices and face packs. I enlisted my younger sister Andrea to lie still each morning while I plastered her face with bananas, oatmeal and bits of random garden plants. I stripped apples from my fathers tree and dug a small pit in the ground so I could bury them, hoping to surprise and delight my family by bringing out this fresh supply in the depths of winter. (They were definitely surprised.)

I also remember making a birthday present for my friend Vanessa by infusing water with rosemary and decanting it into an old perfume bottle. When Vanessa upended the bottle onto her wrist, out plopped a shocking lump of blue mould that quivered on her skin until she shrieked and hurled it off.

Despite early failures, I continued this kind of dabbling throughout my teenage years. Then, in my early twenties, something changed. For the first time I started to earn my own money. Buying things suddenly seemed more fun than scrounging them and materialism ruled.

Within a few years, another wave of change broke over me. My first child, my son Marlon, was born and I was washed into a twilight world of human body fluids, disintegrating sleep patterns and single-minded dedication to this small new cause. The dull band of pain across my head became a part of me, and my inability to remember what I had done a day, or even an hour, before grew legendary. Just when I thought this period might never end, it did.

I resurfaced. Lo and behold, I had a new little friend who liked to pick me small bunches of forget-me-nots from garden borders and eat nasturtium leaves at the park. He reminded me of how I used to be, and I started gathering and experimenting again.

Eventually, my long, stumbling journey to reconnect with my Ngti Tukorehe, Ngti Raukawa ki te Tonga and Tauranga Moana iwi whakapapa would lead me to spend a year studying for a rongo diploma at Te Wnanga o Raukawa, learning from Rita Tupe, Maudy Tupe and Mate Tihema. And, just like that, I was an absolute beginner again, wide-eyed and hungry to understand.

More recently, my daughter Nova and I have been learning to harvest harakeke correctly as we embark on learning raranga together.

I think were all foragers at heart. From birth, the drive kicks in. We snuffle around, smelling, feeling and able to see only as far as we need, to find food in our tiny mum-sized domains. Months pass, then years, but we still employ all our senses in the hunt for health and sustenance. We might be lucky enough to grow up with foraging traditions. Or perhaps we follow our noses towards delicious-smelling takeaways or surreptitiously feel avocados at the supermarket.