Deliciously deadly
This new growth shoot of the tutu tree looks strikingly like a large, edible, asparagus shoot, but every part of this unusual tree (except for the ripe berry-like petals of its fruit) is deadly poison.
TUTU (Coriaria arborea) has a unique poison known as tutin. A shrub or small tree growing to a height of about 20 ft. It occurs in shrubland and in open places in coastal and montane forest throughout New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. It is an important re-coloniser of land on slips, landslides and after floods. It often comes in profusely on cuttings running through damp forest. It is a straggling plant, much branched from the base and with four-angled branches. The leaves are opposite and on slender stems, the whole looking like a pinnate leaf. Each leaf is 1–3 in. long, about broad-ovate and acute. The small flowers are arranged in drooping racemes, 6 in. or more in length. The petals, later juicy and purplish-black, embrace the fruit. Maori would gather these petals and crush them for the juice, filtering it through baskets lined with spiderweb to ensure not even a single poisonous seed or deadly piece of leaf got into the juice.
The poisonous principle is a toxin, tutin, which occurs in all parts of the plant except the fleshy petals. Tutu has been responsible for the greatest percentage of stock poisoning by plants in New Zealand. Sheep and cattle are mostly affected although once a circus elephant was killed when it grazed on tutu. Occasionally poisoning of human beings by honey has been attributed to the honeydew from sucking insects (impervious to the poison) which has been collected by bees. This usually only happens in drought periods when the bees are short of flowers.
Deliciously deadly
This new growth shoot of the tutu tree looks strikingly like a large, edible, asparagus shoot, but every part of this unusual tree (except for the ripe berry-like petals of its fruit) is deadly poison.
TUTU (Coriaria arborea) has a unique poison known as tutin. A shrub or small tree growing to a height of about 20 ft. It occurs in shrubland and in open places in coastal and montane forest throughout New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. It is an important re-coloniser of land on slips, landslides and after floods. It often comes in profusely on cuttings running through damp forest. It is a straggling plant, much branched from the base and with four-angled branches. The leaves are opposite and on slender stems, the whole looking like a pinnate leaf. Each leaf is 1–3 in. long, about broad-ovate and acute. The small flowers are arranged in drooping racemes, 6 in. or more in length. The petals, later juicy and purplish-black, embrace the fruit. Maori would gather these petals and crush them for the juice, filtering it through baskets lined with spiderweb to ensure not even a single poisonous seed or deadly piece of leaf got into the juice.
The poisonous principle is a toxin, tutin, which occurs in all parts of the plant except the fleshy petals. Tutu has been responsible for the greatest percentage of stock poisoning by plants in New Zealand. Sheep and cattle are mostly affected although once a circus elephant was killed when it grazed on tutu. Occasionally poisoning of human beings by honey has been attributed to the honeydew from sucking insects (impervious to the poison) which has been collected by bees. This usually only happens in drought periods when the bees are short of flowers.