Trivia: the Maori weren't settled there as the mid-to-southern part of SI as it's too cold to grow one of their staples: the kumera, which is sort of a sweet potato. They did all sorts of things to cold-proof their kumera, but there were limits. Remember that the Maori are a Polynesian people; they came from more tropical places, so they had tropical foods like breadfruit which AFAIK doesn't grow in NZ, excepting possibly the northern parts of NI, where it's approaching tropical.