Easily distinguished from its lowland cousin. The mountain cabbage tree has much broader leaves – blue-green, wide, and dramatic. They are up to 15 centimetres wide, the broadest of any New Zealand cabbage tree. The trunk is mostly unbranched, a single column rising to eight metres. The flowering stems develop below the leaf tuft, not above it. The flowers are small and white, followed by red berries. The tree grows in open spaces and gully heads, in wet montane forest and subalpine scrub. It is a tree of the high country, of the cold and the mist. The name Tōī refers to its mountain habitat. It grows from southern Auckland to Fiordland, mostly west of the Southern Alps. It is a tree of the treeline, of the place where the forest gives way to the snow. In the south, where growing kūmara (sweet potato) was marginal, tōī was an important food source. The growing tips or leaf hearts were stripped of leaves and eaten raw or cooked. Young stems and roots were steam-cooked in earth ovens to yield nutritious sugars. The strong leaves produced tough fibre for ropes and baskets. The tree was a lifeline in the cold south, providing food and materials where other plants failed. To see a tōī is to see a tree of the mountains. It stands in the mist, its broad leaves dripping with rain. The snow lies at its feet, the wind bends its trunk. It has been here for millennia. It will be here as long as the mountains stand.