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Introduction
Proto Oceanic *koka
Proto Polynesian *koka
Niuean reflexes of *Koka
Koka as a Māori plant-related word
This plant name seems to have originated among languages in the Bismarck Archipelago, and denoted trees of the genus Macaranga, generally found on the edges of forests and more open country. In the Solomons and Vanuatu however it was reapplied in many places to a taller forest canopy tree, Bischofia javanica. This meaning was carried into the Central and South Pacific, except for Niue, where the name was applied to another indigenous forest tree, Baccaurea seemannii. None of these genera are present in Aotearoa, but the memory of the Polynesian referent persisted in the form of a colour name (the Bischofia is much esteemed in Tonga and Samoa as the source of a brown dye).
Proto-Oceanic *Koka: Macaranga species.
 The word koka can be reconstructed from the names given in some of the languages of New Ireland, Northern Vanuatu and the Solomons to trees of the genus Macaranga. This is a widely distributed group of plants, with about 300 species found mainly in tropical areas from West Africa to East Polynesia; there are with five species native to Samoa (four endemic) and six to the Society Islands; none are native to Hawai'i, but two introduced species (M. tanarius, native to tropical Asia and the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and M. mappa, shown on the left, native to Sulawesi and Northwest New Guinea) have become naturalized there. Although they differ in detail, the different species have many features in common -- they are mostly pioneer species found on the edges of forests and disturbed or open ground where there is plenty of light, have fairly large, peltate leaves; different species grow from three to 15 or 20 m high. Male and female flowers are found on separate trees. Art Whistler reports that in Samoa the seeds are relished by starlings and doves.
The Macaranga trees generally have light timber which has a variety of uses in different environments, but is especially useful as firewood or for starting fires: either as kindling wood, or as a firestick twirled to create friction on a harder wood until it ignites. It is also used in parts of Melanesia for making bird cages. The wood of Macaranga harveyana is used to make plank canoes in Samoa (where the tree is known as pata) and canoe planks in Rarotonga (where it is called 'enua). In Samoa the leaves are used to cover the umu (the leaves of the related M. seemannii, lē hau, are used similarly in Niue), and elsewhere Macaranga leaves are used to wrap fish to keep it fresh. In Samoa too an infusion of the scraped bark is used for treating stomach ailments and worms. The fruit also has medicinal uses.
Macaranga seemannii is native to Tonga, Niue and Fiji, It grows from 4 to 20 metres tall and was reported in A.C. Smith's Flora Vitiensis to be very common in Niue's inland forests (it is also found in Fiji and Tonga). In Niue it reaches about 5 metres, and has alternate leaves up to 15 cm long. There are two varieties, v. seemannii (lē hau) and v. capillata (lē ata or lē toga).
Proto-Polynesian *Koka: Bischofia javanica
 By the time the name *Koka reached the Western Pacific, it was reapplied to a large forest canopy tree, Bischofia javanica, found in tropical South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific as far as the Society Islands.. This tree is known to grow up to 40 m high in New Guinea, but generally is about 20 m high in Polynesia, where it is native to Tonga and Samoa; Art Whistler considers it to have been a comparatively recent introduction to the Cook Islands, but W. R. Sykes (Flora) thinks there it more likely to be native to Rarotonga and other parts of tropical Polynesia. The wood is red and the sap is also usually red, but may be pink, creamy, or almost colourless. The flowers are light yellowish green, borne in panicles 6 - 20 cm or more long, the female ones producing small (about 5 mm in diameter) ovoid fruit, black or red when ripe, with 6 small seeds. The fruit is eaten by pigeons, doves and starlings. The leaves come in clusters of 3 oval leaflets tapering at the tips, 4-14 cm long dark glossy-green on top, lighter underneath, with prominent veins.
The wood is hard and durable. In Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu it is used for ground posts, and it is also widely used for firewood, and making carved handicrafts. In Samoa, the leaves are stuffed into the stomach cavity of pigs being prepared for roasting.
The tree's most valuable attribute in many of the places where it is found is its flaky dark-brown bark and red inner bark. This is the source of a red-brown dye used to colour tapa. (The tree has probably been specially cultivated in places where it is used for this purpose.) The brown dye obtained from the scraped bark is the most common traditional dye in Samoa. The sap is wrung out of the scraped inner bark and collected in a bowl. Traditionally fau (Hibiscus tiliaceus) fibres were used to make bags for wringing the bark, but now woven rice sacks are more commonly used. The process is very like that used for extracting tītoki oil in Aotearoa (it is illustrated on the website of Siapo.com). The 'o'a dye is used by itself or mixed with other pigments. Similar use is made of the bark in Tonga. The tree bark is not used these days for dye in Rarotonga, but that may be because the aute used for making tapa died out there for some generations util being recently reintroduced.
In Samoa and Tonga an infusion of the scraped bark is used to treat mouth infections and sores. In Samoa an infusion of the crushed leaves is also sometimes taken, and juice from chewed or crushed leaves may be used as eye-drops for blury vision, eye injuries, or eyelid infections. The sap mixed with soot from burnt cadlenut is used as ink in tatooing.
Botanically, the genus Bischofia (which has B. javanica as its only species) has been placed in several families. It was originally included as a member of the Euphorbiaceae; it is now usually grouped with the Phyllanthaceae, but it is the only member of this family with trifoliate leaves (leaves with three leaflets). Some botanists class Bischofia javanica as the sole member of a unique family, the Bischofiaceae.
Niuean reflexes of *Koka
 Depending on which flora or dictionary you consult, up to four trees or shrubs have been given the name koka in Niue.
Baccaurea seemannii, an indigenous tree, is listed in J.M. McEwen's Niue Dictionary and the NaturaList database (Heenan et al. 2025) as having the name koka in Niue. T.G. Yuncker's Flora of Niue Island notes that a fast red dye is obtained from the bark. It is probably for this reason that it has been given the name koka, referring to the Tongan koka Bischofia javanica. Parts of the plant are used medicinally. Bischofia javanica, a Polynesian introduction to Niue, is also present under the name of koka . Dr Peter Heenan told me that there is a single Bischofia tree on the road edge in a public forest in Alofi which is a well known landmark.
The third Niuean koka is Acalypha wilkesiana (Salicaceae), illustrated on the left, an introduced shrub which can grow to 2 m or more tall and is commonly planted in hedges. It has serrated ovate leaves up to 20 cm x 15 cm, mottled with shades of red, yellow, and bronzey green (so they may look as if they have been splashed with several different dyes), gradually tapering to a sharp point (acuminate), and bears spikes up to 15 cm long of small flowers. The shrub is native to the Bismarck Archipelago and the Western Pacific, but is widely cultivated in the tropics and subtropics as a hedge or ornamental plant. There are many horticultural cultivars, including variegated forms.
A shrub tenatively identified in Yuncker's Flora of Niue Island as ? Xylosma aff. samoense (Flacourtiaceae -- this genus is now placed in the willow family, Salicaceae) is described a shrub or small tree with glossy, pointed, wavy-edged leaves 8 cm or more long, and bearing obovoid ridged fruit, with the local name of koka. It is found in thickets and forested areas. However Dr Peter Heenan from LandCare Research has informed me that subsequent research has found that the plant was mis-identified -- it is actually Flacourtia jangomas, a cultivated plant, possibly a Polynesian introduction, with the forest trees probably the result of people (or birds) dropping seeds there. The association with koka seems to have been a case of mistaken identity by Dr Yuncker's informants -- the leaves look rather like those of Baccaurea seemannii; the actual local name for the tree is palamu (because the edible fruit is a bit like the English plum).
*Koka in Aotearoa
The Polynesian discoverers of Aotearoa brought with them a memory of the Polynesian koka, and some of the processes associated with its use, rather than the tree itself.
Firstly, it denotes the colour brown, the colour of the dye which makes the tropical Polynesian koka such a valuable tree. The Williams Dictionary gives one example of this use of the word: "E rua ngā kiore, he pūhina tētahi, he koka tētahi" (There were two rats, one was grey and the other brown), but unfortunately does not give a source, so you will have to make up your own story to accompany it.
Secondly, the word refers to old, dried leaves of harakeke, reminiscent perhaps of the shreds of bark obtained from the Bischofia tree to obtain the dye.
Thirdly, koka is the name of a type of rain cape; often rather different I suspect from the pākē illustrated in museum collections-- I have not been able to obtain a picture of this type of cape, but it may have been made from whenu (strips of the harakeke or kiekie leaves prepared for weaving, sometimes rather hurriedly) rather than the muka (harakeke fibre) used to weave the more elegant pākē. Both capes are mentioned in a Ngāti Maru tradition recorded in Volume 5 of John White's Ancient History of the Māori, and would have been equally proficient at repelling the rain, but the koka garment gained a special significance. It recounts the journey of a group of warrior priests on a reconnoitering expedition:
Tae rawa mai rātou ki Hingakaka ... kua pākarukaru katoa o ratou kākahu māori; nga kākahu papai, nga kaitaka, nga nako, nga koroai, nga tūtata, nga tuputupu, nga tōpuni, nga huru, nga kākahu o namata o ngā rangatira. Heoi anō ā rātou kakahu i tae ora mai ai rātou, he koka he pākē, ētehi ingoa ēnei, he otaota he kiekie e tupu i te nehenehe nei, ko ngā mea kua maroke whatu ai e rātou.
When they had all got to Hingakoka [near Pirongia]... their everyday clothes were quite ragged, all their fine garments worn by chiefs in days of old such as kaitaka, neko, korowai, tūtata, tuputupu, tōpuni, huru; so the garments in which they returned were the koka and the pākē. These were made of grasses, and also of kiekie , which grows in the forest, the leaves of which when they had faded and become dry, were woven by these people into garnents.
The koka capes became a badge of honour worn by an elite group of warriors trained to bide their time until the moment had come to strike a decisive blow against the enemy:
Ka mahue ko te ngohi koka nei, i muri rawa hoki taua ngohi, ka kaha te hoariri a ka eke ki runga ki te iwi kākahu koka nei te hoariri, kātahi ka maranga ake taua iwi kātahi ka whawhai ka kawe ka kawe. Kātahi ka whakapaua katoatia te riri a te iwi kākahu koka nei, ka whatinga mano tini o te ope rā, ka kite mai ngā iwi i whati rā, kua toa te iwi kākahu koka rā, ka hoki mai ki te whawhai ka mate te iwi nei, kore rawa tetehi tangata i hoki ki tōna kāinga.
The body of koka-clothed warriors were in the rear all this time; but when the battle was most furious, and raged in front of the koka-clothed warriors, these rose and joined in the fray, and beat and drove the multitudes before them, so that when the tribes who had fled at first before the fury of the battle saw that the koka-clothed warriors had driven their enemies before them, they took courage and came back and again took part in the fray, defeating those tribes; not a single man from the enemy returned to his home.
The word was also used as the name of an "edible plant", but which plant and what its other properties were is now unknown.
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