Artwork information

'This shrub grows to the height of six or seven feet in the open country. Cattle are often poisoned by eating too freely of the plant. The seeds of the little berries which succeed this flower are highly poisonous; but the Natives make a wine from the berries, carefully straining the juice from the seeds. This wine is very sickly in taste.'

(Edward Jerningham Wakefield, Illustrations to Adventure in New Zealand from 1839 to 1844; with some account of the beginning of British colonization of the islands. Plate XIV, no.1).