Proto Rarotongan-Māori : *Pōfutukava
REFLEXES IN POLYNESIAN LANGUAGES:
Rarotongan: Pō'utukava ngānga'u, 'utukava ngānga'u (Scaevola taccada, "Sea lettuce", Goodeniaceae)
Rarotongan, Mauke, Mangaian: Pō'utukava (Sophora tomentosa "Silverbush", Fabaceae)
Atiu: Po'utukava (Sophora tomentosa, "Silverbush", Fabaceae)
Maori: Pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa, "Pōhutukawa", Myrtaceae)
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Whether in Aotearoa or Rarotonga and neighbouring islands, this is a strange word with even stranger referents, making the complex rather hard to explain.
 The key element in this name would appear to be a reflex of the Proto-Polynesian word *futu -- hutu in (NZ) Māori and 'utu in Rarotongan. It is not hard to imagine why a derivative of *futu might be applied to what we now call the pōhutukawa in Aotearoa (illustrated left). The flowers and the form of the tree, when seen from a distance, and its dominance of the shoreline in the northern part of the country, might easily remind someone of the tree Barringtonia asiatica which *futu and its reflexes denote almost everywhere in tropical Polynesia.
The tomentum (fur-like hairs) on the leaf of the shrubs Sophora tomentosa (Fabaceae), and Scaevola taccada (Goodeniaceae), both called pō'utukava in Rarotonga, also provide a link to its New Zealand namesake.
Their seaside location is another link among these plants and to the Barringtonia -- other common characteristics among all these plants were probably evident in the imagination of whoever first coined the word from which both the modern Rarotongan and (NZ) Māori words are derived. The leaves of the Scaevola, for example, are vaguely reminiscent of the Barringtonia, although the Scaevola is a small shrub and the Barringtonia is a reasonably large tree (up to 15 metres or more high).
In Aotearoa the word pōhutukawa was also used to refer to a variety of kūmara, but the reasons for this and the characteristics of that variety are now unknown. The name could be linked to the star Pōhutukawa, one of the Matariki (Pleiades) cluster, which appears on the horizon at sunrise to announce the start of the New Year and the time that planning should start for preparing ground for planting kūmara in the Spring, and vanishes when the stored kūmara tubers should be providing sustenance as winter sets in.
The Rarotongan Scaevola pō'utukava and Aotearoa's Metrosideros pōhutukawa have other pages devoted to them (follow the links for descriptions), so the rest of this page can be devoted to the Rarotongan/Southern Cook Islands pō'utukava (and, just to complicate matters further, Aitutakian torokava), Sophora tomentosa.
 As can be seen from the photographs on the left and those in the gallery, Sophora tomentosa is a leguminous plant which does not look very much like it namesakes in Aotearoa or the rest of the Cool Islands, or its etymological ancestor the futu. It does however share a common habitat with the others, as a littoral plant preferring sandy soils and tolerant of salt. The leaves are covered with a greyish to white tomentum, like the underside of those of the New Zealand pōhutukawa, which has given it the name "Silverbush" in English. It grows to up to about 5 metres high in very favourable locations, although on an exposed coastal site it might not be much more than a metre. The leaves (with between 11 to 17 leaflets) can be up to 20 cm long, with the leaflets 2-4 cm long and a little more than half as wide, with rounded ends. The attractive pale yellow flowers are followed by the seed pods which have given the plant an alternative English name, the "necklace pod" tree.
The shrub occurs natively from East Africa through the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia to Northern Australia and Polynesia except Hawai'i and Aotearoa. This has undoubtedly been aided over the millenia by the ability of the seed pods to float for three months without affecting the viability of the seed (although they do not germinate readily if they are directly immersed in sea water), but it is now rare in many parts of its former range. In the United States it is widely grown horticulturally in Florida and California. The flowers (like those of its New Zealand relatives, the kōwhai) are a rich source of nectar for birds and insects.
Like the kōwhai, all parts of the plant are poisonous, thanks to the alkaloid sophorine (cystine), which is concentrated especially in the seeds and the bark of the roots. This has its uses, however: in some places the seeds are ground and used as fish poison, and also to make insect and spider repellents. Extracts from the seed and bark may also be medicinally useful in very small doses in the treatment of diarrhoea, colic and dysentery, as an antidote to ingesting poisonous fish or a treatment for the stings of such creatures. An overdose could, however, prove fatal to the patient. In Samoa the wood is used mainly for firewood and making coconut husking sticks. The trunk is quite slim -- not more than 40 cm or so in diameter in a mature tree, but the wood is hard and durable (hence the use for husking sticks), so potentially useful for making other small objects.
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