Introduction
Pōniu as Cardiospermum halicacabum
Pōniu as Abrus precatotibus
Pōniu as Poniu in Aotearoa
The Fijian name for the vine Cardiospermum halicacabum, which appears to be the prototype for the Polynesian one, is listed in the Pollex database as vooniu. Mrs A J. Rachenda Parham records it as waniu; A, G. Smith (Flora) gives the native names as wa niu or vo niu. The Proto-Polynesian reconstruction is based on the assumption that the name was brought to Polynesia as their version of vōniu by the first groups of setttlers to arrive, when the languages of Fiji, Rotuma and Polynesia were only just beginning to differentiate. Mrs Rachenda Parham notes that the Fijian name means "creeping round nuts". This seems to be the sense in which this name was carried to Polynesia, denoting in different places either the balloon vine, Cardiospermum halicacabum, or the rosary vine Abrus pecaoribus, but not both.
Its status as a Proto-Polynesian name is questionable, as it does not seem to occur in West Polynesia or the outlier languages. However it could simply have fallen into disuse there, or have been rediscovered through contacts between East Polynesian voyagers and people familiar with the Fijian name, thus becoming an indirectly inherited name in East Polynesia. By the time it got to Aotearoa it may have been remembered mainly for the curved point on the Abrus seed pod, which would explain its transfer to a very different plant.
Pōniu as Cardiospermum halicacabum
In her Fiji Native Plants, Mrs A. J Prasenda Parham provides this succinct description of Cardiospermum halicababum:
This handsome plant has white and yellow flowers, growing close to the ground, almost hidden by the very large and numerous orchid-like parallel-veined leaves, often indeed they are overlooked and undescribed. Flowers have four petals; the leaves in sets of three—one set egg-shaped and long, the next serrated, or lobed.
The plant is an annual or perennial vine with stems that may be hairy at first. It branches out from the base and climbs by means of tendrils just below the flower heads. Its fragrant flowers have white petals, and produce an inflated green fruit containing glossy brown or black seeds.
In Polynesia the name pōniu survives for this plant only in Hawaii, although the plant itself is widely distributed; judging by the lack of local names, this is probably of recent occurrence. However it is known to have been growing wild in Hawaii since at least 1819. It can spread naturally very easily, and A.G. Smith (Flora Vitiensis Nova) suggests that the plant is possibly indigenous (having arrived without human intervention) through much of its range. In Hawai'i the plant is found in disturbed areas at low altitudes; in the Marquesas, where it is known by various names including komoka and tapipoutu (but not pōniu, a name reserved for Abrus precatoribus), it is found in coastal strand areas, along roadsides, in disturbed areas and secondary forests.
The whole plant was reputed in Hawai'i to be a cure for dizziness if worn as a lei and a little was eaten before throwing it into the sea. It may also once have had medicinal used in Tahiti, where it was known as vinivinio, a name that seems to have fallen into disuse along with the plant. In some parts of Asia the shoots and leaves are used as vegetables, and the seeds as beads in necklaces. Outside Polynesia the plant has varying therapeutic uses, as a diuretic, laxitive, and helping to cure nervous diseases.
It does not seem to be as seriously invasive a weed as a related species, C. grandiflorum, which smothers native vegitation in some places where it has established itself, although both have been listed officially as pest plants by the NZ Department of Conservation (National Pest Plant Accord 2008).
Pōniu as Abrus precatorius
The name in the Marquesas (and perhaps, with a slight alteration of the final vowel, in Mangareva) has been reapplied to another vine, Abrus precatoribus. The vine is naturalized in Nuku Hiva and several other islands, and found in plantations, dry disturbed areas and clearings. The plant may be of African origin, but has a pan-Tropical distribution. It is probably native or else present as an ancient Polynesian introduction in Western Polynesia; it is naturalized in Hawai'i and probably an early Polynesian introduction to the Cook Islands. It is known as matamoho in Tonga and matamoso in Samoa.
Abrus precatoribus is a low scrambling vine with slender wiry stems up to 9 metres long, with many pale pink of mauve flowers borne in clusters. The leaves consist of 16 to 30 or more pairs of leaflets. The small fat seed pods are up to 5 cm long, with a short beak curving inwards. They bear globular seeds, glossy red with a black stripe. The seeds are highly poisonous to eat, but are ideal for use in necklaces, thus one of the plant's names, the rosary vine -- and the possibly apocryphal story that it got that name when Catholic missionaries introduced it to the Marquesas for making rosary beads.
In Samoa the vine is found mostly in distirbed forests. It is used there for making leis and other decorative purposes. In the Cook Islands the seeds are used for making leis; despite its probably being indigenous or an early Polynesian introduction, it has a variety of names -- pitipiti'o (a name also used in Tahiti), uiui, and, on Mangaia, kōvirivi mata tako, meaning "black eyed koviriviri", referring to the similarity of its seeds to those of the red-bead tree, Adenanthera pavonina. In Hawai'i it is known as pūkiawe and cultivated for its seeds. (There is also another pūkiawe in Hawai'i, Styphelia tameiameiae, a variably shaped shrub found in bogs, alpine areas, and damp forests and open places. Smoke from this plant was used for neutralizing the kapu (tapu) of ali'i before they mixed with commoners.)
Pōniu as Poniu in Aotearoa
 The New Zealand member of this group of plants is not a vine. Its closest resemblance to its tropical namesakes is the curved point at the end of its seedpod, as with Abrus precatoribus, although the latter bears its seed pods in clusters, and they are stouter than their New Zealand counterparts.
The poniu is a marsh cress, indigenous to Aotearoa but found throughout the world. It is scattered throughout the North and South Islands, in riverine and marshy areas and damp ground. It has squarish stems, and an often sprawling growth habit, but can grow up to 30 cm high, The lower leaves are up to 10 cm long on stalks about 1 cm. long. Its flowering stems are branched, bearing small yellow flowers with four petals, followed by small (two to four centimetres long) oblong seed-pods with numerous small seeds. The plant was misidentified for decades as Rorippa islandica, the polar cress. In his Flora of New Zealand Vol. 1 (1961) H. H. Allan commented of the plant included under that name, "I am not at all sure that this species is properly placed under R. islandica." Other botanists agreed, and the plant has now been identified as R. palustris..
The leaves are edible and suitable for use as salad greens. At one time the plant seems to have had a similar function to pūhā, and was often included as a green vegetable to be steamed in the hāngi.
Both Murdoch Riley (Herbal) and Andrew Crowe (Native Edible Plants) mentioned its efficacy as an antidote to scurvy, and the dramatic effect it had on curing some of the crew on de Surville's ship the Saint Jean Baptiste when he visited Aotearoa with some very sick sailors, making landfall in Doubtless Bay in December 1769.
This ultra-cosmopolitan plant is native to Mongolia as well as Aotearoa, but the the plants from the Gobi Valley lakes featured in the gallery below were not photographed in Mongolia. When I searched for "Gobi Valley lakes" via the web I could find only the Mongolian Gobi Valley lakes, and none of that name were mentioned in any register of New Zealand place names I consulted, so I contacted the distinguished ecologist Simon Walls, a recipient of the Loder Cup, who took the photograph and who had previously given me permission to use his photographs from the NZPCN website on these pages. He sent me a very interesting and informative reply, which includes this information about the place and the plant:
My Gobi Desert is on Farewell / Onetahua Spit where, due to an absence of formal names, we have adopted our own ones to enable us to refer to the parts of the Spit where we work. A 35 km long Spit really does need some place names. The sandy expanses of the Spit have many colloquial names. The Gobi comprises a large area of mobile dunes, some wind-hollowed lakes and a large slow-moving dune called the Tibetan Plateau nearby and was named by members of the Nelson Ornithological Society. ....
Rorippa palustris, previously not recorded from the Spit, suddenly appeared in dried up dune lake beds during a drought in 2010. The last dampness remaining sustained the plants while all around cracks appeared in the drying lake deposits. It appears that long-lasting seed germinated from lakebed deposits and produced a flush of cress plants as the opportunity arose. Copious seed is now deposited again under the water, waiting. For the manawhenua Iwi this was the second Rorippa rediscovery, the first being matangoa, Rorippa divaricata in this rohe (previously considered a North Island plant).
Farewell Spit / Onetahua is an attenuated sandspit curving out from the Northwest tip of the South Island. The Gobi Lakes, Desert and Big Gobi Dune are all near the base of the Spit, and depicted in the last photograph in the gallery below, to the right of the rediscovered cress.
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