Margie Beautrais
New Zealand's natural environment is something most Kiwis regard as precious, irreplaceable and unique. Our forests, birds and other native species are recognised iconic symbols of these islands and the importance of conserving our natural heritage is well understood.
A new imperative for me as a museum staff-member is supporting the conservation and preservation of a plant that has been here for such a long time it deserves to be regarded as a unique part of our natural heritage. It is the hue, or taha , a variety of lagenaria gourd grown continuously in New Zealand for around 1000 years.
The hue was brought to New Zealand by Maori. The plants have been grown here successfully ever since that initial introduction. The seeds from each year's fruit are carefully saved and planted the following season, in a tradition that has continued unbroken since the arrival of those first ancestral seeds.
While the hue fruit is edible when small and unripe, its significance is due to the useful vessels made from the dried gourd. In New Zealand, these were used for musical instruments, bowls and containers for water and preserved meat, with different sizes and shapes having different purposes. It is reasonable to conclude that deliberate selection of the most useful shapes and sizes of taha, over such a long period of time, has resulted in varieties unique to New Zealand.
Over the last year, Whanganui Regional Museum has been encouraging the growing of Lagenaria siceraria bottle gourds through the Whanganui Gourd Project. Around 1000 participants from schools, preschools and local families have been growing gourds during summer. Very soon, as the leaves wither in the first frosts, and the plants die down, it will be time to harvest and dry the mature gourds.
The seeds of the unique New Zealand hue are given from person to person, and handed down through generations. The hue is a precious part of our cultural inheritance, and our natural heritage.
Several very large hue were grown and dried in Whanganui last year. Skilled artisans have recently worked together recreating traditional taha (storage vessels). These are encased in finely woven kete, with a carved mouthpiece fitted into the opening at the top. From Friday, 11 April, they will be on display at Whanganui Regional Museum, alongside very old examples from the Museum collection.
The seeds that have been removed are precious. Their genetic heritage extends back to the earliest arrival of people to New Zealand. I hope that we will be able to conserve and preserve the New Zealand hue, which has been separated for 1000 years from its original gene-pool. This requires growing the seeds separately from any other Lagenaria gourds to avoid cross-pollination with different gourd varieties.
In my view, the task of conserving New Zealand's unique cultural heritage plants, such as the hue, stands alongside the responsibility to conserve our endemic native plants. They are all unique, and they belong here.
Margie Beautrais is an educator at Whanganui Regional Museum