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This pant name has an unusual distribution, both geographically and in what it refers to. In tropical Polynesia it is primarily the name of a small forest tree and confined to West Polynesia; it then reappears as the name of a mountain buttercup in Aotearoa. This may be just a coincidence, but on the other hand it is quite likely that some of the early explorers of Aotearoa were familiar with the Samoan tree, and were reminded of its abundance of yellow flowers when they encountered the buttercup, hence the name korikori, like or reminiscent of the tropical 'oli.
Introduction (above)
*Koli in Tropical Polynesia
Koli, Kākoli - a possile variation on the theme
*Koli as Korikori in Aotearoa
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*Koli in Tropical Polynesia
The Tongan and Samoan reflexes of *koli retain their original Proto-Polynesian meaning and refer to the small forest tree, Syzygium neurocalyx. This tree is quite common in Fiji, where it is found from seal level to about 900m, and much less common tn Tonga and Samoa. Nonetheless it is widely distributed in Samoan forests in Savai'i and Upolu, and was thought to have been present on several islands in Eastern (American) Samoa but apparently no longer found there.
 The WFO database lists this species as indigenous to Fiji (where its usual name is leba), Samoa and Wallis-Futuna, and naturalized in Tonga. Art Whistler (Flora, p. 419) thinks it might also have been a Polynesian introduction to Samoa. However, Albert Smith in his Flora Vitiensis Nova notes that although some authors think the species was introduced into Tonga and Samoa, he believes "that it has merely been brought into villages from the wild as an ornamental and useful plant, this often being the case in Fiji" (Flora, Vol. 3, p. 347).
The tree grows to four metres or more in height, with smooth, cylindrical stems. It has opposite, leathery leaves, 12-30 cm long with very short stalks. The flower buds appear solitary or in small clusters, each emerging from a dark-red bell-like covering (as illustrated above, left) and opening into a flower with four small white petals and hundreds of yellow stamens, with filaments 2.5 cm long. The fruit is a shallowly-angled red or purple berry up to 7.5 cm log, and highly fragrant. In Fiji it was used to scent coconut oil and worn as a perfumed pendant there and in Tonga and Samoa. In Tonga also the fruit is used in leis. It has strong timber, and in Samoa was at times used for canoe outriggers and house ribs.
In Fiji, where it is much more common and was also cultivated, oil from the fruits was considered useful as a skin lotion, and the leaves and buds were used in medicines for lung ailments.
 The other Western Polyneian koli is a related species native to India and Southeast Asia, Syzygium samarangense, known in Niue as koli vao (forest koli) but in Samoa as nonu vao, and in Tonga as heavula. It was probably a twentieth Century introduction to Western Polynesia generally, but has become so well naturalized in Niue that it is a dominant forest tree and often thought to be a native both there and in Samoa. Like Syzygium neurocalyx, it is related to the New Zealand maire tawake, Syzygium maire, and the Malay Apple, Proto-Polynesian *Kafika, Syzygium malaccense. This can be a much larger tree than the Samoan and Tongan koli, growing to 15 m.or more high, but it also occurs as a shrub only about a metre tall. It has an open, wide-spreading and rather disorganized looking crown, and a trunk 25-50 cm in diameter which branches fairly close to the base. It has opposite leaves 6-21 cm long with very short petioles and prominent veins. The showy flowers are borne in panicles, with four small white petals and an eruption of around 300 stamens each with light yellow filaments about 2.2 cm long. The attractive pear-shaped fruit are bright red when ripe and up to 15 x 8 cm in size. Although not commercially grown as a fruit tree, in some of the places in its range the fruit is sold in local markets (see the photograph in the gallery below). Although reportedly somewhat bland and insipid in taste, obviously it is sometimes eaten by people as well as bats and pigeons. The tree is an important timber tree in Niue. Elsewhere it is also grown for timber, and as a shelter or shade tree. It is a tropical tree which requires a high annual rainfall or proximity to water to thrive.
Koli, Kākoli: a possible variation on the theme
 The original Niuean koli appears to have been the shapeshifting Volkameria inermis, which depending on where it is growing may be a rather floppy shrub, a liana, or a small tree. It is difficult to see what its connection with the other koli might be, except perhaps the fairly large opposite leaves and the extended filaments bearing the stamens, although these are very few and far between when compared with those of the Syzygium species. The plant ranges naturally from India and Southeast Asia to Western Polynesia; in Tonga it is known as tutuhina and in Samoa as aloalo tai or suni.
It is found in littoral areas, on sea cliffs and along the margins of wetlands (including the margins of mangrove swamps in Fiji). In Niue its is one of the plants characteristic of sea cliffs and lower terraces. It may be a scandent shrub with long branches, a small tree up to 5 m. high, or a liane in the forest. The stems are often purple. The leaves are 4 - 10 cm long, and up to 5 cm wide, pointed at the tip, with purple-red petioles. The white, tubular flowers appear in small clusters. The corolla splits out into five petal-like lobes, 1-1.5 cm long. Each flower has 4 stamens with long purple filaments topped by a yellow anther. They produce a 4-lobed yellow-green or brown fruit which splits when mature into four black nutlets.
In Samoa juice from the crushed leaves is applied to cuts and puncture wounds, and the plant has various other medicinal uses elsewhere. In Niue the bark is also used for making baskets in which arrowroot is prepared.
*Koli as Korikori in Aotearoa
Although it seems quite a stretch of the imagination to skip from a Javanese apple to a buttercup, it is not impossible that a splash of yellow on the mountainside or seen through the mists on a mountain stream reminded some early explorer of a yellow-flowered forest tree at home, albeit this one has yellow petals in lieu of the yellow anthers of the plant from Hawaiki.
The buttercups also attracted the attention of the early European visitors to Aotearoa. Richard Taylor, in the botany chapter of his Te Ika a Maui (1855, p. 447) noted that:
The common butter-cup is remarkable for the great irregularity in its petals; it may be found with either one, two, or three, or more, up to nine. The kopata uraura, is a very large and beautiful butter-cup, with glossy leaves, found in pools of water in elevated parts of the interior. It is said to be extremely poisonous; the roots are thick and long, almost like tubers.
The kowai kura is also a large kind, with downy leaves; the flower is small in proportion to the plant. There is also a pretty kind growing in swampy ground.
He may have been referring to Ranunculus amphitrichus or R. glabrifolius (the Māori names he used are now associated with quite a different plant, Geum urbanum). R. glabrifolius is known to be highly toxic. "Kopata uraura" could be interpreted as "glowing dewdrops", quite an appropriate name for these plants.
 Ranunculus insignis, the korikori, is found in the North Island from Mount Hikurangi south to the Tararua and Ruahine mountan ranges, and in the South Island from Nelson and Marlborough to North Canterbury. Ir is predominantly an alpine plant, found in grassland, herb fields and rocky crevices and sheltered outcrops above 700 metres, but comes down close to sea level on the Kaikoura Coast. In favourable situations it is a strong-growing plant half a metre or more high, with a branching inflorescence, but in some environments may reach only 10 cm, with smaller flowers. Typically, the thick and leathery leaves are large, kidney shaped and up to 14 x 16 cm, hairy especially on the undersides. The flowers are 2 - 5 cm in diameter, with 5 - 10 golden-yellow petals, sometimes up to 15 (this variability seems to be a feature of New Zealand buttercups).
This is essentially a plant of the wild, although it may occasionally be found in alpine gardens.
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