Bush lawyer, it will find you and it won’t let you go (much like those American lawyers who hang on tight once they have their hooks into you, only letting go when they’ve extracted as much money as possible). Bush lawyer is more into blood than money.
Bush lawyer is a relative of the blackberry (Rubus family), roses are in this family too and it is their evil thorns they have in common. It is a climbing/rambling plant so will be hanging across other plants just waiting for an exposed bit of skin to hook on to. Nasty.
Early Europeans in Aotearoa must’ve been desperate for jam as they used to pick the tiny little raspberry-like fruits and make jam out of them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ripe bush lawyer berry (they are yellow to red in colour when ripe) as the rats and birds eat them before we even see them. And then imagine trying to pick them with all those thorns, bugger that.
The goodish news is that the green berries, when boiled, taste sweet, so if you are in the bush, hungry, lost and desperate, and have a pot, water, dry firewood and a handful of bush lawyer berries, you are in for a sweet treat.
Tātarāmoa is the original name for bush lawyer. Māori had many uses for this plant, but the one that most excites me is its sleep-inducing properties.
It also reduces anxiety and is good for headaches and migraines.
While poking round the internet for information on this, I found a lovely website called Awhi Ora Rongoa, which provides information and products for sale, for use in rongoā medicine. They sell an oil made from tātarāmoa, or a tincture. The oil is massaged into your temples and neck for a good night’s sleep. People were raving about it in the comments section.
I ended up buying some of the tincture to see if it is worth my while risking getting scratched to bits making my own version. My insomnia is famously hard to cure, but it will be worth a try, and, if it fails for me, I will have helped a small New Zealand business run by Māori women.
I thought there was heaps of tātarāmoa in the Orokonui estuary track bush, but a friend and I walked the whole track with eyes on full forage mode, and found nothing. But on a trip to Christchurch, I was taken for a walk around Pūharakekenui/Styx River catchment, which is an extraordinary piece of urban ecology, with native plantings, citizen science studies, river management, and planting of loads of trees and plants treasured for rongoā medicine. I found some tātarāmoa/bush lawyer growing there, so have done a wee experiment.
It is indeed calming and relaxing so would be worth a try for anyone with mild anxiety or sleep problems. Watching the news is enough to give a person anxiety these days, so it will be a very useful plant.
There is definitely plenty of tātarāmoa out there somewhere in local bush, just waiting to get its hooks into you.
Note: Do not use in pregnancy.
