A rare and tasty white-flowered plant has been nursed from the brink of extinction at Scion in Rotorua and delivered home to the East Coast.
In a ceremony at the crown research institute yesterday 100 white ngutukaka plants were gifted back to Ngati Kohatu and Ngati Hinehika iwi to be planted on their ancestral land at Te Reinga marae at Wairoa.
The white variant of the usually red ngutukaka, more commonly known as kakabeak, was last seen growing in the wild in the 1950s at Tiniroto cliffs near Wairoa and was considered extinct. A chance discovery of a bag of seeds stored in someone's garden shed led to the discovery of the native plant. Through genetic testing, the plant's origins have been traced back to the Wairoa region.
Minister for Conservation Maggie Barry yesterday shared her tips on the best way to propagate the plant, also known as clianthus. She said the plant was full of nectar and prized to birds and insects, snails and slugs and had "passed to the dark side, driven to extinction by animals that liked to eat it".
"It was a combination of the skills of Scion, the wairua of the plant and the aroha of the iwi that the plant is with us today - very few species can recover from this - once they are gone, they are gone forever."