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Introduction
The Fijian cognate of *Nefe
Nehenehe on Easter Island
Nehe in Hawaii
Nehenehe in Aotearoa
This is a kind of "catch anything" plant name, with only the Hawaiian and Māori reflexes having any apparent connection with each other. The reconstruction of the proto-Polynesian name as *Nefe is based on the Fijian word for a species of fig, which has quite unrelated names in Polynesia. It is however a littoral plant, and its association with coastal environments provides a link with its Hawaiian and possibly Rapanui nominal counterparts.
In Rapanui it is the primary name for a few fern species, and an alternative name for others. These would seem to have little in common with the Hawaiian and New Zealand plants, except that given the challenges of the ecology of Easter Island they are plants able to survive in a fairly hostile environment, as do their namesakes in Aotearoa and Hawai'i. The latter species are occasionally decumbant (prostrate at the base) woody herbs or small shrubs found in open and often rather hostile environments in montaine and littoral environments respectively
Ficus scabra - Neve, the Fijian reflex of *Nefe
 Ficus scabra is sometimes a small prostrate shrub in exposed coastal locations, which would seem to be its closest link with the Polynesian Nehe and Nehenehe. In more sheltered spots it grows into a tree 10m or more high. It is native to Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Niue. In Samoa it is known as mati vao "wild fig" or "fig of the bush". A.G. Smith (who does not list Neve as a local name for this plant), notes that some researchers in Fiji report that the cooked young leaves are edible. Art Whistler records that in Samoa the bark fibres of the tree were used to make fishing lines, nets and sometimes tapa cloth. According to Mrs H. B. Rachenda Parham in Fiji the plant is also the source of an effective medicine for stomach ailments, but there are no details as to the part of the tree used -- it may be an infusion of the bark (Art Whistler in Tongan Herbal Medicine notes that the bark of Ficus obliqua is used that way). The small round fruits are yellow or reddish initially, and may become purple when ripe. They are much esteemed by birds, but there are better figs available for people.
Nehenehe on Rapanui
 The Easter Island nehenehe are ferns, linked to the other apparent reflexes of *Neve by their abiity to survive in less than ideal, often hostile environments.
Exactly how many ferns have this name varies from author to author. Jorge Fuentes' Dictionary of the Easter Island Language (1960) names two species of fern as nehenehe, not precisely identified but defined as denoting "Helecho" (bracken), to which the Pollex database adds "a moss" from a different source. Other writers have individually associated up to six among seven species of fern which at some time have been assigned this name (out of the 16 living species native to Rapanui; see Jean-Yves Meyer, "A note on the taxonomy ..." (2013) for more detail). The species most often identified this way are Reholttumia costata (pictured on the left), Microlepia strigosa, Asplenium obtusatum, and A. polyodon (the latter two are also native to Aotearoa).
Relhottumia (formerly Pneumatopteris) costata is found on Southeast Asia, Melanesia and West and East Polynesia. The fronds can be up to 90 cm long, and are arranged in rosettes so that from the top they are descibed by W. R. Sykes (Flora of the Cook Islands) as looking like giant shuttlecocks. In Easter Island the fern lives among the boulders in volcanic craters. In the Cooks it is found in rocky riparian habitats.
Asplenium polyodon has glossy dark-green fronds (lighter green and paler below) up to 1.3 m long and 25 cm wide (often less) spaced about 1 cm apart along the rhizome. In Easter Island it is found in the craters of volcanoes, near or on peat islands in the volcanic lakes. In Hawai'i it is found in damp or wet forests from 600 to 2000 m above sea level. In Aotearoa it also likes damp environments, normally epiphytic on fallen logs in the North Island, but in South Westland it forms large terrestrial colonies.
Asplenium obtusatum is found from Australia to South America, and forms clumps with fronds highly variable in length -- from 5 cm to well over a metre long with the stipes (stalks) about half the total length, and leaves to match in pairs, each up to 10 x 2.5 cm. It is a coastal fern found on the rocky shore in Easter Island and similar exposed places in Aotearoa. It is known as Paretao in Māori and is featured on the page for Proto-Polynesian *Palatao.
Microlepia strigosa is the closest of these ferns to qualify as "bracken". It has fronds measuring up to 1 m by 30 cm, straw coloured and often with very short hairs (1 - 2 mm long), also along the midribs. In Easter Island it is found among rocks where moisture is available, and is abundant in the crater of Rano Kao. In Hawai'i it is known as Palapalai, and is sacred to Laka, goddess of the hula. There it grows in a variety of dry and damp environments from sea level to 1800 m, and often forms colonies in these habitats.
Nehe in Hawai'i
 In Hawai'i, the apparent reflex of *Neve refers to a group of woody herbs well adapted to tough conditions.
These are members of the genus Lipochaeta and its close relative Melanthera. Melanthera integrifolia, illustrated on the left, is a prostrate herb up to 2 m long, is a key member of the plant community on dry coastal cliffs, slopes of tuff and weathered lava (where it is associated with the herb Boerhavia repens). It has thick fleshy leaves up to 3 cm long and half as wide, covered with short hairs emerging from minute swellings. Lipochaeta lobata (partly prostrate or spread out in curving stems, with serrated oval tapered leaves and flower heads in clusters of two or three, growing to 1.5m) and L. rockii (found mostly on Moloka'i, usually erect up to 1 m., or with stems curving upwards; the leaves are around 7 cm long by 5 cm wide, with three to five lobes) are part of the ma'o shrubland, associated with ma'o, Hawaiian cotton, Gossypium tomentosum, on leeward coasts with a substrate of weathered clay and numerous rocks on the surface. In kiawe forests 10 - 75 m inland (dominated by the introduced mesquite tree, Neltuma pallida) they are among the few typically strand plants surviving. Among these is L. succulenta, an occasionally erect but usually mostly prostrate herb with stems 1.5 to 4 m long, rootimg where they touch the ground, and rather fleshy leaves. This species is also found in a very different environment, damp windward coastal forests dominated by hala (Pandanus tectorius). These and related species are also the key plants on the nehe shrublands along ridges and cliffs in Kauai and Oahu, low valleys on Moloka'i, and also in leeward West Maui.
Although the mesquite, mentioned above, has a Hawaiian name (kiawe) and is the dominant plant in some coastal ecosystems, it is a very recent arrival in Hawai'i. Wagner e al. (Flora, p.693) give an account of its spread from the tree grown from a single seed planted in Honolulu in 1828. This tree is said to be the ancestor of all kiawe grown in Hawai'i.
Nehenehe in Aotearoa
 As a plant-related term, nehenehe has two meanings in Aotearoa: a general term for forest or the bush, and the name of a tough little twiggy shrub, Epacris alpina.
The latter nehenehe is a small bushy shrub growing up to about a metre and a half high. Its twiggy branches are covered in small hairs, and have small leathery overlapping leaves 3-5mm long. The tiny leaves are distinctly widest at middle, with a prominent ridge on the underside. The flowers are white, borne in abundance towards the upper parts of the branches. The fruit is a small dry capsule..
As its Latin name indicates, this is a plant of the mountains, unlike most of its Polynesian namesakes. It is found from the central North Island to South Westland in montane grasslands and open rocky areas.
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