Story: Ngā tupu mai i Hawaiki – plants from Polynesia

More links and websites

• Maori agriculture – its methods, implements and ceremonial

  This section from Elsdon Best’s 1941 book, The Māori, discusses ‘the art of cultivating food products’.

• Māori gardening: an archaeological perspective

  This very comprehensive article on the Department of Conservation website focuses particularly on kūmara (PDF, 445 KB).

• On the vegetable food of the ancient New Zealanders before Cook's visit

  William Colenso wrote this article about plants cultivated by Māori for food, published in 1880.

More suggestions and sources

• Ballard, C., and others, eds. The sweet potato in Oceania: a reappraisal. Pittsburgh: Dept. of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh; Sydney: University of Sydney, 2005.
• Best, Elsdon. Māori agriculture: the cultivated food plants of the natives of New Zealand: with some account of native methods of agriculture, its ritual and origin myths. Wellington: Te Papa, 2005 (originally published 1925).
• Horrocks, M. ‘Polynesian plant subsistence in prehistoric New Zealand: a summary of the microfossil evidence.’ New Zealand Journal of Botany 42 (2004): 321–334.
• Leach, Helen. 1,000 years of gardening in New Zealand. Wellington: Reed, 1984.