Rangiora Leaves

While walking in the Botanic Gardens with my children, we love to stop and explore, admire, or wonder about various plants. It is beautiful to hear children's theories about what is happening with plants, why they look the way they do, how they grow, etc. As is the current understanding of best practice, we encourage children to think logically and pursue their own theories using the information and experiences they have, but our goal is not to arrive at any kind of "correct" answer. This results in wonderful discussions, which I love. With careful thought and consideration of learning goals, we do suggest ideas or share knowledge as appropriate, of course, as learning is done in community.

One day, we walked past this plant, and a parent who had joined us for the day told us that it was called Bushman's Friend. When the children asked why, she showed us the white, smooth back of the leaf and explained that people used to use it for toilet paper when they were in the bush. I thought that was interesting and looked it up. I learned that in addition to its use by settlers as toilet paper, Māori had used it to wrap food, to swaddle babies, and as a medicinal poultice. 

Not long after, when I went for a walk with J, he told me that people used to send leaves as postcards, but they're not allowed to anymore, as it doesn't work well in the machines. This really got me thinking, and since then, my children and I have been collecting these leaves (when we find them on the ground, as we never hurt living things) and using them to paint on instead of paper. I am always trying to find ways to teach children about conservation, and my most recent focus has been on protecting trees by recycling and reusing paper, so this fit perfectly, and it's been delightful! I have also collected several dead Rangiora plants (which can grow taller than me), which I've brought to work, so we can hang our painted leaves on it.

When doing a bit more research, I found that there was an even more popular postcard plant, called Muttonbird Scrub. It's leaves are not as impressively big as the Rangiora, but they were more leathery and stayed flat when posted (unlike Rangiora which I have experienced curling up if I don't press it carefully).

Here is a picture I found of a Muttonbird Scrub leaf that was sent as a postcard. Unfortunately, in addition to now being banned from the postal service, Muttonbird Scrub is only found in the lower South Island and on Rakiura (Stewart Island), so I won't be using it much with my children. But I'm quite happy with Rangiora, which is prolific here and works just fine for painting.