|
Introduction
*Luna in Tropical Polynesia: Boerhavia spp.
Runa in te Reo Māori
The plants sharing this name in tropical Polynesia are mostly members of the genus Boerhavia, and have deep tap roots, as does their counterpart in Aotearoa. The name may have come from Fiji, where it refers to a species of grass, or possibly from Micronesia, which would make it an indirectly inherited Central Pacific name. Certainly B. tetranda and probably B. glabrata came from Micronesia, and seem to have been early Polynesian introductions to most places in Polynesia where they are now found, but whether the name also came from Micronesia requires further investigation.
*Luna in Tropical Polynesia
There are a few possible cognates of *luna listed in the Pollex database which appear to have a different origin from the rest. In Pollex the definition of *Luna is "Herb sp.", which of course is wide enough to include any herbaceous plant. However looking at *luna as a name, it does seem to be attached quite clearly to a few species of Boerhavia, which in turn have some characteristics in common with their New Zealand counterpart. There are half a dozen exceptions to this rule. In Tuvalu and Pukapuka the words luna and nuna respectively denote the nettle Laportea ruderalis, known elsewhere by reflexes of Proto-Polynesian *Hongohongo. In Rennel and Bellona the words guna and nguna respectively refer to the noni, Morinda citrifolia. In Penhryn runa refers to a green seaweed covering rocks, and in Rapanui nuna or nunga denotes the fern Amauropelta margaretae. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we can assume for the moment that most of these words are of independent or different origin, not directly connected with Proto-Polynesian *Luna.
The genus Boerhavia has 59 species recognized in the Kew "Plants of the World Online" database, but some botanists recognise more, and others far less. The same variation applied to their names: the species called runa in one locality will often be present under a different name in another (which also may have a species of Boerhavia referred to as runa). The main ones in Polynesia are Boerhavia repens, B. diffusa, B. glabrata and B. tetranda. They are all coastal plants.
Boerhavia tetranda is native to Central Polynesia. It is a prostrate to semi-prostrate herb with a fleshy taproot and long purple or green stems, sometimes forming a loose mat.. The leaves are similarly coloured and highly variable in shape and size, varying from 5 to 7 cm long and 4 to 6.5 cm wide. The plant bears sprays of small pink to white flowers.
Boerhavia glabrata (which includes forms of B. acutifolia, B. diffusa and B. repens in the description in Wagner et al. Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawaii) probably originated in Indonesia. It is a slender prostrate herb which sometimes forms loose mats. The leaves are small, usually 1 - 2.5 cm long, but may be up to 6 cm, narrowly ovate, broadly lanceolate, or ovate-triangular. It has small, white to pinkish flowers, widely spaced in many-branched panicles.
Boerhavia repens has a thickened root with prostrate stems radiating out from the root crown. The highly variable leaves are 1 to 5 cm long and 0.5 to 5 cm wide. The flowers are pink or white. The fruits adhere to seabirds and shore birds, which helps to account for the species' wide distribution (from Africa to Hawaii), and in turn its variability. Art Whistler (Plants in Samoan Culture) notes that in Samoa these days it is a kind of weed found mostly in pebbly soil around houses, but in the past the roots served as a famine food. This probably earned it the name ufi 'ātali, "yam-herb".
Boerhavia acutifolia (partly merged with B. glabrata by Wagner et al, Manual) is identified by Art Whistler (Plants of the Canoe People) as an aboriginal introduction to Polynesia, restricted mostly to disturbed habitats. He distinguishes it from Wagner's B. repens. Like B. repens, it has a thickened taproot, and the stems radiate out from this. It has opposite green leaves, often purple underneath, quite variable in shape -- lanceolate to oblong or ovate, 1-4 cm long, variable at the base but pointed at the tip. The inflorescence is carried on a stem up to 10 cm long with widely spaced clusters of a few small flowers, white or pink, with a tiny, club-shaped sticky fruit.
Boerhavia diffusa may not occur in Polynesia except as a very recent introduction. The name is treated as a synonym of B. repens by Lorence and Wagner in their Flora of the Marquesas Islands, and apart from having been introduced to Niue,
the species is not listed as present in any part of Polynesia in the Kew Plants of the World Online database. The species listed as B. ?diffusa in the list of reflexes at the top of the page are probably B. repens, but we do not at present have ay confirmation of this assumption.
Runa in te Reo Māori
The name was applied in Aotearoa to the native dock, Rumex flexuosus, another prostrate herb with a stout tap root and inflorescence with widely-spaced whorls of tiny flowers. It grows 50-60 cm long or high with many-branched stems, and oblong leaves10-20 cm long, widening slightly and rounded at the ends; sometimes with wavy margins. The flowers are yellow or green. The plant grows in damp, open spaces scattered throughout the country. There are several adventive naturalized species of dock known as Paewhenua or Paenehua in Māori, words which in other contexts mean simply "weeds". The word runa denotes only the native species.
There is another native dock, Rumex neglectus, which grows in coastal areas near streams and on damp sand in the South Island (in the North Island it is found only near Wellington); as its Latin name suggests, this is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of plant, with no recorded Māori name.
A comment on the medicinal uses of runa is found in an account of an attempt to storm a British redoubt at Sentry Hill, Te Morere (near the banks of the Waiongona River, a few km inland about half way between Waitara and New Plymouth) in April 1864, given to James Cowan by Te Kahu-pukoro of Otakeku, Taranaki (The NZ Wars, Vol II, pp. 23-27). Te Kahu suffered two bullet wounds, one to his shoulder and one through his hip (fortunately missing the bone):
We survivors all retreated to Manutahi, and there my wounds were bathed with flax juice, and in about a month I was able to travel again, and I returned to my home in Okaiawa, in Ngati Ruanui country. Boiled flax root poured on the wounds and also dock-root (runa) well-scraped and boiled, were our favourite remedies for gun-shot and bayonet wounds.
The sap from crushed leaves also makes an effective remedy for minor cuts and abrasions, and a poltice from the crushed leaves was used to draw boils. The roots were not a famine food in Aotearoa; the oxylates found in many species of Rumex may make them poisonous.
 Two other dictionary meanings are given for runa as a Māori word: a water plant, and the shrub Plagianthus divaricatus (illustrated on the left). Both the dock plant and the shrub could qualify as "water plants", the shrub grows near the sea shore, and on the edges of salt swamps and estuaries (but not actually in the water), and the dock is often found in very wet places, like the plant near Kyeburn illustrated at the top of this page.
Plagianthus divaricatus is a relative of the houhere, and has the same kind of mesh-like inner bark. It is a tangled divaricating shrub even when mature, and can grow up to 3m high. Its narrow leaves are dispersed alternately or clustered along the slender twigs and branches, about 2 cm long on young plants, but smaller (6-18 mm) on mature shrubs. It forms dense bushes because of the interlocking branches. The flowers are very small, clustered or solitary.
Murdock Riley (Herbal, p.429) notes that it was used by Māori in the South Island as a cure for ringworm, but the accounts quoted do not describe exactly how this was done.
The Plagianthus has other names, mākaka and houi, and the name runa is probably a reference to its similarity to the tangled appearance of some older, more erect specimens of the herb, rather than a direct recollection of the Polynesian plants.
|
