Forest Lore of the Maori

Polynesian Plant Names in New Zealand

Polynesian Plant Names in New Zealand

It is interesting to note that many of the Maori names of trees, shrubs and small plants were apparently introduced from over-seas lands, brought hither by sea-rovers of past centuries from eastern Polynesia, principally from the Cook and Society groups. Our far-flung plant-names are also, in some cases, encountered in distant Micronesia and Indonesia. In Vol. 7 of the Journal of the Polynesian Society appear about twenty-five of our plant-names known to and used by the natives of Rarotonga. The following are some of our local plant-names that are still in use in the isles of Polynesia, and, in some cases, in more distant regions of Oceania. Certain wellknown letter-changes in the different dialects are too familiar to us to cause any doubt or difficulty. In a few cases the incoming Maori has here applied an old island-home name to a plant of the same genus, in others he has merely seen some resemblance to a well-known species in northern isles.

Maori Names

The above list contains a number of the plant-names of New Zealand that have apparently been brought hither from northern isles; doubtless there are others not included here. The names of New Zealand plants are first given, after which appear identical or similar names employed in other lands. In a great number of cases the botanical name is not given in island vocabularies. We also meet with plant-names in Polynesia that show a change of consonant strange to southern eyes, such as the Tahitian anuhe (the common fern, or bracken), the rau-aruhe and rarauhe of New Zealand, the rhizome of which is called aruhe. At Nukuoro I. or Monteverde, south of the far-off Caroline Group, where a dialect of the Maori tongue is spoken, ruhe is the name of a large fern.