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Spring specialties: garlic scapes, pea shoots, ramps, fiddlehead ferns, English peas, fava beans.

So it’s like: Push yourself a little bit, to sea urchin, to fiddleheads.

They are also great sauteed in a pan with fiddleheads, the unopened foliage of the ostrich fern, whose season is approaching.

Ms. Mori’s creations look like chimerical species — hybrids of barnacles and cumulus clouds, a baobab and a weeping willow, a waterlily and fiddlehead ferns, sea urchin spines and a swarm of starlings.

Gradually, native ingredients like kawakawa or fiddlehead ferns, as well as traditional cooking techniques, have inspired non-Maori New Zealand chefs like Al Brown or Ben Bayly.