The word “milo” is of Eastern Oceanic origin, that is, it seems first to have been used as a tree name by those Austronesian explorers who had left the New Guinea area to explore the islands that lay beyond: the Southeast Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Micronesia, Fiji and Polynesia. It referred primarily to a particular tropical tree, Thespesia populnea, a relative of the hibiscus, and replaced an earlier word for this plant, *banaRo, still used (in its varied inherited forms) in many of the other parts of the Austronesian world, including the Philippines.
Malcolm Ross on his chapter on "The coastal strand" in the Lexicon of Proto-Oceanic, notes that "There is some evidence that for early Oceanic speakers Hernandia nymphaefolia and Thespesia populnea formed a taxon" (p. 137), that is, these two "beach trees" with hard wood used for making drums were grouped together under a common name, as is still the case in Tagalog, for example. As you can see from the picture in the gallery above, the leaves of both species are rather similar; however their inflorescences are quite different. By the time it got to Polynesia, milo referred only to the Thespesia; the Hernandia is known by a variety of local names.
The Thespesia grows to about 12 metres high, with a spreading habit in the open. The heart-shaped leaves taper to a point and can be up to 25 cm long, with yellow veins and a stalk 5-14 cm long. The flowers are yellow with the petals spotted purple at the base, 5-8 cm long and produced singly or in pairs. The fruit is a red, rounded capsule about 3-4 cm in diameter. It disintegrates rather than splits to release the seeds. In island Melanesia it is one of the trees like the fau (beach hibiscus -- Hibiscus tiliaceus) which is typical of littoral habitats, among the scrub close to the beach and on the edges of mangrove and other swamps. Occasionally, it is found in such habitats in Hawai'i, but there, as Mrs Sinclair notes (see quote below), it is more closely alligned with people. In sheltered environments its branches are abundantly clothed with its glossy foliage; in exposed situations, it takes on a more rugged appearance -- both situations are illustrated in the photographs in the galleries.
The seeds of the milo are bouyant and resistant to salt water, which has assisted its natural dispersal throughut the Pacific. It is found on most high islands, but rarely on attols -- and is thought to be a Polynesian introduction in Hawai'i and parts of East Polynesia. The wood is also resistant to decay in water, hence its use in boat building. The wood is also favoured for wooden bowls in Hawai'i, and in Samoa it is the preferred material for making booms for canoes and canoe paddles when obtainable, along with breadfruit splitters, other tools, kava bowls and carved artefacts. In the Cook Islands the wood is also greatly valued, and is used for making slit-gongs, bowls, boat parts, paddles, axe handles and furniture.
In the Cook Islands the fruits are used in the treatment of urinary tract ailments and abdominal swellings. Fruits with a split calyx are considered male, and those with an intact calyx female. In Samoa, the green fruits, run through with a piece of coconut midrib, are used for making tops.
The bark also has medicinal uses. In the Cook Islands a solution of miro and 'au (Hibiscus tiliaceus) bark is used to treat teething problems in infants; in Tonga and Samoa also an infusion of milo bark is used for treating mouth infections. A similar infusion is sometimes used for treating stomach and worm infections in Samoa, and diarrhoea in infants and peptic ulcers in Tonga. In Tahiti and elsewhere and infusion of miro bark is also found helpful in treating headaches.
Although the particular tree referred to by the word *milo (and still called milo in Hawaii, Samoa, and Tonga and miro in Tahiti, the Tuamotos and Rarotonga) was certainly the rosewood (Thespesia populnea), the word seems to have been more than simply a tree name. The word, but not the tree, is present in Rapanui and Aotearoa, and it is possible that both the word and the tree were carried to Hawai'i when the islands were initially settled. In Easter Island, the word miro is used for timber or ornamental trees – trees whose fruit is not eaten by people – and in New Zealand it refers to a native podocarp, Prumnopitys ferruginea. The elaborated form of the word, toromiro, arose after the Polynesians had left Samoa to settle parts of the Pacific still unexplored to the east and south, and in Easter Island refers to Sophora toromiro, a very close relation of the large-leaved kowhai S. tetraptera native to Aotearoa, in Tahiti to a sacred variety of rosewood, in Rarotonga to an endemic leguminous tree, and in Aotearoa the word is a synonym for miro.
 Botanically, the Aotearoan miro (foliage illustrated to the left) and its northern namesakes belong to different divisions of the Plant Kingdom, so they are very distant relatives indeed genetically. Thespesia is a member of the Malvaceae (Mallow family) within the Magnoliophyta (Flowering plants), and Pectinopitys is a member of the Podocarpaceae (Podocarp family) within the Coniferophyta (Conifers).
Although very different superficially and botanically, these milo/miros all have a lot in common: they have very strong, beautifully grained and easily worked wood, visually attractive fruits which are not food for people, and an aesthetically-pleasing form. Miro has always been one of my favourite trees, and when I first saw the Hawaiian milo I wondered why the first Mäori had used this name for an apparently quite different tree when they arrived here. I got my answer on page 10 of a dismembered book, Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands, by Mrs Francis Sinclair, Jr. (London: Samson, Low. Morton, Searle & Rivington, 1885), whose pages were displayed in the visitor centre of the Kōke'e Lodge and Museum in the Kōke'e State Park on Kauai, one of the arboretums I visited while researching the Hawaiian counterparts of Mäori plant names in October 2007. The book was a compendium of 44 beautigully executed watercolour paintings with accompanying text. The author dedicated it "to the Hawaiian Chiefs and people, who have been my most appreciative friends and most lenient critics", The notes are a felicitous combination of botanical and ethnographic material, and personal comment. She noted that the milo was seldom found far from human habitation, and that the wood was used for making calabashes. She also supplied a key as to why the name was carried to Aotearoa and applied to a seemingly very different tree:
The leaves are beautifully glossy, and the wind moves them in a most graceful way, somewhat like the quivering of the aspen. (Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands by Mrs Francis Sinclair, Jr. London: Samson, Low. Morton, Searle & Rivington, 1885, p.10.)
So the old name milo carried far more than a just a reference to a particular species; rather it evoked a number of special qualities that link several quite different trees along the route which the early Polynesian explorers travelled. It is a graceful tree with a dark red-brown heartwood, durable and suitable for carving and a variety of other uses, with a fruit which is not generally eaten by people but (in the case of the Tahitian and New Zealand miro) relished by birds.
In Hawai'i, the Marquesas and Tahiti, the milo/miro (Thespesia) is regarded as a sacred tree. There is some debate as to whether this tree is truly indigenous to Hawai'i, or was brought there from Tahiti or the Marquesas, along with taro, aute and other plants by the Polynesian settlers. Like the karaka in New Zealand (which is indigenous to a very small area on northern Aotearoa), it is associated with human settlements especially around the coasts, which is not surprising considering the esteem in which the wood and the tree itself were held. In Tahiti it was sacred to Tāne, and planted around marae. In Hawai'i, commoners were not permitted to use it. It is also one of the trees featured in the creation chant, the Kumulipo. In Chant 2 ("The World of Infancy") in the Kakakaua text, it appears as the guardian-plant for the laumilo (undulating moray eel), Gymnothorax undulatus:
O kāne ia Wai'ololi, o ka wahine ia Wai'olola
Hanau ka Laumilo noho i kai
Kia'i ia e ka Milo noho i uka.
Man for the narrow stream. woman for the broad stream,
Born is the Laumilo eel living in the sea
Guarded by the Milo tree living on land.
(M.W. Beckwith, The Kumulipo, pp. 66, 192).
The name "Laumilo" literally means "Milo leaf", an analogy with the way the eel moves through the water, like a milo leaf fluttering in the breeze.
The alternative name āmae in Tahiti (and the Tuamotus) probably originated as a temporary renaming of the tree after the death of an Ariki with "Milo" incorporated in his name; usually after a fitting period of time the old name would again be used, but occasionaly the new name would persist and even replace it.
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