Mount Stewart has a mild climate and specialises on plants from the Southern Hemisphere…here two Maori food plants, Phormium (NZ Flax) to the left and the broad leaved mountain cabbage tree (Cordyline indivisa). Phormium nectar was commonly collected by the Maori as a sweetener. It was mixed with a meal from the root and stem of cabbage trees and also used to sweeten bracken fern roots! This was before bees were introduced to NZ by the Europeans!

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