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The Fijian Qalo is not known as kalo, 'alo or karo in Polynesia, but is tangentially linked to Māori karo in the Pollex database. The two trees belong to quite different botanical families. The Fijian tree is a member of the same genus as the Aotearoa kāmahi, Pterophylla (formerly Weinmannia) racemosa. A few years ago the older-established genus Weinmannia was split into three, Pterophylla (including the two New Zealand species) the widest ranging, Weinmannia, mostly in the Americas, and about a dozen other species, mostly native to Southeast Asia and the Pacific, transferred to Ackama, an already-established genus which retained its two New Zealand species. These changes are recognized in the NZPCN and Biota NZ databases, although in August 2023 the World Flora Online database still listed them as "Unchecked".
Fijian Qalo and its ananymous Polynesian siblings.
The qalo itself has a number of botanical aliases apart from Weinmannia affinis: Weinmannia manuana, W. rarotongensis, W. richii, and W. samoensis. Art Whistler notes in his Flora of Samoa (p. 178) that some authors regard the first two as separate species; however he considers the evidence for their being separate species is inconclusive and they are better all regarded as ecologically influenced variants of the same species, Pterophylla affinis. The plant is a spreading, medium-sized evergreen tree, up to 12 m high in favourable environments, with glossy-green tooth-edged leaflets up to 12 cm long by 4 cm wide. The leaves may be simple, or consist of 3 leaflets clustered on a single stalk. It has small white flowers (sometimes pinkish to dark red) produced hebe-style, followed by small fruit, red when ripe.
Mrs H.B. Richenda Parham describes the qalo (under another synonym, W. rhodogyne) as "a stunted bushy tree growing on the tops of ridges at elevations of 2,500 to 3,000 feet. Albert Smith (Flora Vitiensis Nova, Vol. 3, p. 22) characterizes the tree (under the name of W. affinis) as "an often compact shrub or small tree 1.5 to 7 m high at 100-1000 m in open or dry forest, ridge forest, or dry slopes. Art Whistler observes that "Although a common tree at high elevations, it has no Samoan name and consequently no reported uses" (Flora, p. 178). In Rarotonga the tree does have a name, Kaiatea, recorded in the 1920s but aparently no longer known; as in Samoa, this tree has "no recorded uses". This purported lack of usefulness may be partly because the tree is not good even for firewood -- its counterpart in Aotearoa, Pterophylla racemosa (kāmahi), ranks low in the flammability index.
The spectacular Samoan 'alo'alo
The flowers of the tropical Polynesian flame tree, Erythrina variegata, and sometimes the tree itself, are known as 'alo'alo in Samoa. The more common name for the tree is gatae, a name also used in Tonga (ngatae) and some other West Polynesian languages, and in Rarotonga (ngātae, probably adopted from Samoan). It is widely planted as a street tree in Hawai'i but apparently has not (yet) become naturalized. It is native to many parts of Polynesia, and is a Polynesian introduction to others. Related species have also been cultivated in Aotearoa, and some may have become naturalized in Auckland and Northland. This is a coastal tree which thrives on coral soils. It has spiny branches which can cause injury, hence one of its popular names, "tiger's claw". The tree grows to 20 m high, and sheds its leaves before flowering. Its leaves have three parts -- a larger terminal leaflet flanked by two smaller ones. The spectacular red flowers clustering along a spike make it highly likely that the designation 'alo'alo is indeed a reflex of the Proto-Polynesian adjective makalo "to burn with a glow". Traditionally in the Cook Islands the light wood was used for fishnet floats. In Tahiti (where it is known as 'atae) the flowers are used in leis, and the branches were also useful as fenceposts (which sometimes root, producing a "living fence"). The bark also had medicinal uses, including treatment for stings by poisonous fish.
The most likely link between these plant names and Māori karo is through convergent thinking, the flowers of the tree in Aotearoa reminding someone of a smouldering piece of wood or a sunset glow, bringing to mind the concept encapsulated in the word makaro, just as the flowers of the ngatae had brought a similar vision to someone in Samoa centuries earlier.
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