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Arthropodium cirrhatum
Rock-lily (rengarenga) is a New Zealand perennial with strappy leaves and white six-petalled flowers on tall stalks, often found growing on rocks near the sea. It is grown as an ornamental and is best kept in free-draining soil in a sheltered spot.
Arthropodium cirratum commonly known as rengarenga, renga lily, New Zealand rock lily, or maikaika, is a species of herbaceous perennial plant, endemic to New Zealand, where it may once have been farmed. It is used for medicine as well as food, and has symbolic importance in traditional Māori culture.
The Māori name rengarenga is a reduplication of Proto-Polynesian *renga which in other related languages corresponds to turmeric, especially its powdered form (see Samoan: lega, Hawaiian: lena); this association is due to both plants' similar stem and root characteristics.
It is often grown as an ornamental plant. The rhizomes are edible when cooked and can be found throughout the year. The rhizomes were once eaten by the Māori after being cooked in a hāngī. William Colenso believed, for two reasons, that this plant was once cultivated by them: firstly, the plant grows much larger under cultivation than it usually does in the wild; and secondly it was often found near old deserted Māori homes and plantations. However, he lists it as only fourteenth in importance, in his list of eighteen kinds of wild vegetable food used by the Māori.
It occurs naturally north of Greymouth and Kaikōura near the sea and, as the name suggests, usually on rocks.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Arthropodium cirratum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
