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Contents of this page.
A note on the inherited names. (Below.)
An Alternative whakapapa
Koropuka - Gaultheria antipoda
Kogopua - Ficus ?septica
Olopua - Nestegis sandwicensis
The place of these trees in Te Māra Reo
Since both koro- and -puka are common elements in Māori tree names, it seems probable that both elements would have been present in the ancestral form of this word (as is indeed the case in the reconstruction *kolopuka). If the supposed Rennellese and Hawaiian counterparts are indeed from the same line, it would seem then that they have lost elements rather than that Māori has gained them. However, -puka, which normally implies that the plant has rather large, broad, shiny leaves is a strange element to appear in the Māori name (it would fit much better with the others) so the Māori "k" may simply be a random, epenthetic addition, like that in tēraka (variant of tērā, "that"). The trajectory sketched above is from the Pollex database; a slightly different one (involving the same words) proposed by Professor William Wilson as part of his hypothesis concerning the Solomon Islands Polynesian Outliers as the area where the East Polynesian languages first took shape is noted below. An outline of the hypothesis and some references for further reading can be found in the "Genealogy of Languages" page.
An alternative whakapapa
Professor William Wilson and associates have proposed in their 2018 article in the Journal of the Polynesian Society that the name koropuka, as applied to Gaultheria antipoda, and the names of the other plants in this group, originated in the South Solomons Polynesian Outliers in the formative stages of the Eastern Polynesian languages. They trace the trajectory thus:
Proto South Solomon Outliers-Eastern Polynesian *Kolopua ~ *Koropua
> Proto South Solomon Outliers *kolopua [Modern direct reflex:
>> Rennellese kogopua "ficus tree with heavy wood used for axe handles".]
> PNO-EPn,PSNO-Epn,PCNO-EPn *Kolopua~*Qolopua ["tree species"]
>
Proto Eastern Polynesian *Koropua ~ *Qoropua [Modern direct reflexes:
>> Hawaiian Olopua Nestegis sandwicensis (Oleaceae);
>> Māori Koropuka Gaultheria antipoda (Ericaceae)
A similar trajectory for the same set of plant names is proposed in the Pollex database, tracing them from a hypothetical Proto Nuclear Polynesian tree name (identity unspecified) *(k)olo-pu(k)a, is outlined in the opening sections of this page.
 Koropuka (Aotearoa)
The New Zealand member of this trio (illustrated on the left) is in several ways the odd one out. The koropuka, Gaultheria antipoda, is a fairly small shrub reaching only about 2 metres high, and has leathery oval leaves that are only a centimetre or so long and about as broad. The other trees have very much larger leaves, and can grow to over 20 metres high. Neither of the others has a consonant, epenthetic or inherited, in the last syllable of its name.
This species is found throughout Aotearoa, in forest margins and also disturbed or rocky places, provided its roots are not deprived of moisture for extended periods. It has small, white or red flowers and white or red berries, about a centimetre in diameter. The fruit are produced in abundance, which makes the koropuka a very attractive garden plant after flowering.
Alan Clarke (The Great Sacred Forest of Tāne, p.337) reports that Māori used an infusion of the leaves taken internally as a treatment for asthma or bronchitis; similar decoctions or a poultice of the leaves were used for healing wounds, abrasions or skin eruptions; cuts were effectively healed by applying dry leaves.
Gaultheria antipoda has many alternative names, perphaps reflecting its polymorphic character (red or white flowers and berries, prostrate or erect habits of growth, and variation in the size of its leaves): besides koropuka, the terms taupuku, toroputa, and tūmingi can refer to Gaultheria species in general, and tāwiniwini, takapo, tahupāpapa, and tāpapa to Gaultheria antipoda in particular.
Kogopua (Rennell Island)
All that we have been able to find out about this tree so far is the definition in the Elbert dictionary quoted in the Pollex database: "a ficus tree with heavy wood used for axe handles", and a mention in a story recounted in Samuel Elbert and Torben Monberg's From the Two Canoes: Oral Traditions of Rennell and Bellona (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1965, Text 188, pp.339-40). The story is about Baipoke, a formidable and greedy fellow who terrorized everyone, including the tama'auge (formidable local gods connected with buildings and places) who tried to deal to him, and his younger brothers, who took refuge in a cave. The ripening of the kogopua fruit gave the brothers a chance to have a decent meal, but ...
Hai aano gegeu na kogopua, boo iho kamo agaa peka, o hai kinai tegaa umu ...
Then the kogopua were ripe [and the brothers] went down and caught flying-fox on poles for the two of them and made an oven for them ....
Unfortunately, Baipoke appeared on the scene while they were wrapping the flying foxes in leaves to roast them. Baipoke confiscated their catch, cooking, wrapped and yet-to-be wrapped, and sailed off, so his brothers had to start all over again. The note to this part of the story simply states "kogopua: a tree. Flying-fox eat its flowers and fruit."
One fig that does grow in the Solomon Islands, and presumably in Rennell, and whose fruit and flowers are especially favoured by bats is Ficus septica. I can find no information about any special qualities of its timber, but in the absence of further information it can be a stand-in for the kogopua. The tree grows up to 25 metres high, in the forest verge and on disturbed land, and is dioeacious (with separate female and male trees). It has a yellow latex. The flowers are the unfertilized fruits, which, as with other figs, have to be pollinated by a particular species of wasp, which enters the flowers and thus ebables polination to take place. The co-dependence is absolute in the case of Ficus septica, where individual plants flower at different times and also provide the wasp with food. If there is not a critical mass of trees of both sexes in the neighborhood, a prolonged gap in the availability of flowers will result in the demise of the wasp, and no more seeds to be distributed by the bats.
Olopua (Hawaii)
The Hawaiian tree, Nestegis sandwicensis, is closely related to several in Aotearoa discussed in the page about the olive family. It has a hard, durable wood, favoured by the pre-colonial Hawaiians for house building, and "formerly used for handles of adzes and other tools and as a rasp in the manufacture of fish hooks. It was a preferred firewood, as it burned with a hot flame even when green." (Wagner et al., Manual, p. 992.) It grows to between 8 and 25 metres tall. The genus to which this tree belongs is confined to Aotearoa, with several species whose local names incorporate the inherited name maire, along with Lord Howe Island and Hawai'i, with a single species each. Isabella Aiona Abbot notes the special role of the olopua in the adzing out of 'umeke lā'au, large wooden containers adzed from hardwood and beautifully finished to expose the aesthetic qualities of the grain:
... the Hawaiian adz was an excellent tool, its blade made from high-grade basalt quarried at only a few locations, and its handle from the smooth, hard wood of the olopua (Nestegis sandwicensis), an endemic tree fairly common in the dry forests of the main islands. (Lā'au Hawai'i, p. 88).
The place of these trees in Te Māra Reo
 Since they are possible, if somewhat tenuous, links to the expeditions (from wherever they started or which directons they took) to the westernmost reaches of Polynesia in the centuries immediately prior to the settlement of Aotearoa, these trees provide an important chapter in the narrative embodied in Te Māra Reo. It's just possible that the fruits of the Koropuka (pictured on the right) might have reminded an early arrival of the tree they had seen or heard about in the far west, albeit in miniature, and named it accordingly. In any case, without these tree names, we might not have learned about the scurrilous behaviour of Baipoke, and thus missed a fable with relevance to our times, too.
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