The Polynesian māfa'i or māfai are members of the pumpkin family, the vines Luffa aegyptiaca in parts of tropical Polynesia, and Sicyos australis and Sicyos mawhai in Aotearoa. In Aotearoa the meaning has been expanded to include also the parasitic vine Cassytha paniculata, from a very different family but equally adept at climbing and entangling itself in other vegetation.
This page will deal primarily with the first and last-mentioned of these plants, as the two Sicyos species have already been described on the page for the Māori word Pōhue, an alternative name used also for the Luffa in Rarotonga.
They will get a mention here also, nonetheless!
*Maafa'i -- the original name for Luffa aegyptiaca in parts of West Polynesia
This is one of those problematic reconstructed names. It does seem pretty clear that the Tongan and Uvean names have a common origin, and its application the plant of the same family with very similar foliage and habit of growth which has the same name in Aotearoa seems to be more than just a coincidence. But, as William Shatner might put it, the gap in transmission between Tonga and Aotearoa is "unexplained". There are no cognate plant names currently known in either Samoa or in the other East Polynesian languages. Although the plant is regarded as a "Polynesian introduction", and seems to have been in Tahiti (and therefore possibly the Cook Islands) before James Cook's visits in the 18th Century, there is no clear linguistic trace of its dispersal. Art Whistler however suggests that the name "puru" and its variants was originally applied to the Asian variety of the plant (Ethnobotany of the Cook Islands, p. 395). That is the plant with the dried fibrous interior known in English as a loofah -- as the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1982, p. 596) puts it, the "pod of the plant Luffa aegiptiaca used as a flesh-brush or sponge", rather than the Polynesian introduction, Luffa aegiptiaca var. insularum, with a similar but much smaller fruit, still grown in the Cook Islands and elsewhere, and called pō'ue in Rarotonga. The English name is qualified as the "smooth loofah" to distinguish this species from the Central Asian ribbed luffa (L. acutangula) which has similar qualities and uses.
 Luffa aegyptiaca v. insularum is a climbing and trailing vine with branched tendrils and broad leaves, which can cover large areas.. The petioles (leaf-stalks) are 10 cm or more long and support leaves up to about 20 by 20 cm, with three or 5 lobes, the central one largest and pointed at the tip. There are separate bright yellow male and female flowers (illustrated on the left); the male flowers may be up tp 10 cm across; the female flowers are generally noticeably smaller. It has an oval fruit, green with darker green stripes (illustrated in the gallery, below), about 10 cm long by 5 cm in diameter. The fruit has a white, fibrous network inside which dry out as the fruit matures. When young, the fruits can be eaten. The commercial variety generally used for loofah sponges has much larger and more tubular fruit.
The scientific name of this plant has scrambled around like the vine. The name Luffa aegyptiaca was applied to the typical South Asian variety by the English botanist Philip Miller (1691-1771) in 1768 (the plant originated in South or Southeast Asia, but was also widely grown in the Middle East and North Africa). The small-fruited Pacific variant was named Luffa insularum by Asa Gray (1810-1888), a botanist with the US Navy's South Pacific Expedition, in 1854, and renamed Luffa cylindrica v. insularum by the Belgian botanist Alfred Cogniaux (1841-1916) in 1881. Luffa cylindrica was a kind of "catch all" species, however, and the Pacific plant was reunited with L. aegyptiaca in a later revision of the genus.
Māwhai as a ferocious choko - Sicyos australis and S. mafai.
 A glance at the foliage and habit of growth of the Pacific māfai/mafai/māfa'i and the New Zealand māwhai would make it unsurprising that they should have similar names. This may simply be a coincidence, but there is at least an outside possibility that the names may indeed have a common origin. These two plants also share the Rarotongan designation of pōhue, which, however, is also a generic term for vigorusly climbing and twining vines. Species of Sicyos are found in North, South and Central America, Eastern Australia, Aotearoa, Norflok Island and Hawai'i. They include the Choko, Sechium edule in some accounts (it was renamed that by Olaf Swartz in 1800), which was orginally named Sicyos edule by the Austrian botanist N.J. von Jacquin (1727-1817) in 1760, and that is now the accepted name in the Kew database. The choko is native to Central America. There are 14 species of Sicyos native to Hawai'i, where they are known generically as 'ānunu. Of the two New Zealand species, both known as māwhai, one, S. australis, is found also in Australia, and the other, S. mawhai, is endemic. There is an illustration of the fruit of S. australis on the left.
It is only about a centimetre long, but the spines are ferociously sharp, as are those of S. mawhai. There is more information about these plants on the page for Pōhue.
Māwhai as a parasitic relative of the tawa, taraire and mangeao.
-rw.jpg) Cassytha is the only known parasitic genus in the Lauraceae, a family which includes three sturdy forest trees with names brought from tropical Polynesia -- the tawa, taraire and mangeao. The genus consists of about 24 species, most of which are found in Australia. They are all obligate parasites, that is plants which obtain their nourishment entirely from the host.
Cassytha paniculata is a vine with pale yellow stems about 3mm in diameter and tiny scale-like leaves, which can reach a length of 3 metres or more. The stems (illustrated on the left) twine around the host and form short sucker-like branches (haustoria) that penetrate the host stem and obtain nutrients (see the illustrations in the gallery, below). Those on the ground can trip people up, and also form tangled masses among the herbage they are scrambling over, rather like an ultra-thin, completely leafless version of the pirita, making the plant a candidate for including in Kupe's obstacles, had he encountered them.
Cassytha paniculata is found in the upper half of the North Island, especially in Northland, as well as in Australia. The flowers are in spikes 3-5 cm long. The seeds germinate on the ground and anchor themselves temporarily while developing a thread that searches for a living plant to attach itself to. It will then coil around its victim and attach the first suckers. Once the seedling starts absorbing nourishment the thread below the first suckers will wither away. If the germinated thread cannot find a host within a few days of germinating, it will become dormant and eventually die if it does not come into contact with a living plant.
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