 This is a fascinating word. In Tahitian and Maori its modern reflexes refer to the same trees as those of the older form *milo, from which it is derived, but in both Rapanui and Rarotonga they refer to trees of a different kind. However, there are links between these divergent meanings. In Tahitian, and possibly also in Maori (I haven't come across any examples of the use of the word toromiro apart from the minimalist entry in the Williams dictionary) toromiro refers to a special aspect of the miro, its sacred quality. In Rapanui and Rarotonga the newer word refers to leguminous trees. The Rapanui toromiro at least has many of the qualities attributed to the "original" *milo (Thespesia polulnea) - a beautiful tree, with greyish bark, and a very hard, beautifully-grained wood, qualities which link all these trees to the New Zealand miro, belonging to a very different family but also aesthetically, culturally and practically highly significant.
There is a useful early comment on the Tahitian āmae (toromiro) tree in the journal of James Morrison, the Boatswain's mate of the Bounty, published under the title Account of the Island of Tahiti & the Customs of the Island, and held in the Australian National Library:
Amai — this is a hard Close Wood of a reddish Collour which they also used in Building their Canoes, making Ax & adze handles &c. — with this tree they Generally plant their Morai’s [marae] or places of Worship, & the leaves of this tree are always used in religious rites.
Botanically, the relationship between the plants referred to as toromiro in Tahitian and Māori is quite distant (see the page for *milo for information about that), but the Rapanui and Rarotongan plants given that name are both members of the same family (Fabaceae -- the pea family), although they belong to different genera and subgroups.
The name Toromiro is related to the older term, inherited by Māori as Miro, and in New Zealand referring to the same tree. It is of Proto Eastern Polynesian origin, that is, as far as we can tell, it was first used by the Polynesians who had left Samoa for the Eastern Pacific, eventually colonizing Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter Island, Hawaii and New Zealand and the other islands in this huge region.
In Tahiti it refers to the (northern) Polynesian miro (or milo), Thespesia populnea, with its beautifully-grained hard wood which was prized for building canoes and carving, and had a special status as a sacred tree, with its branches used in religious ceremonies. In traditional Tahitian religion, a priest holding a branch of the sacred toromiro could communicate directly with the gods.
In Rapanui (Easter Island), the word toromiro refers to what looks like quite a different tree, Sophora toromiro, closely related and very similar in appearance to the large-leaved kōwhai (Sophora tetraptera) of Aotearoa. However, this too was a tree which was prized by the people for qualities very much like those of the Thespesia, and its wood (now obtained from Chile, where Sophora toromiro also grows natively) is still used in Rapanui carving. Seeds from the last indigenous Toromiro tree still alive on Easter Island were salvaged by Thor Heyerdahl on the Kon Tiki expedition, and these seeds have enabled the slow process revegetation with this species to begin on the island.
In Rarotonga toromiro also denotes a leguminous tree, Schleinitzia insularum. This tree is native to Southern Vanuatu, New Caledonia, the Society Islands, Austral Islands and probably also the Cooks. (It has a variety of different names elsewhere in its range: for example, feifai in Tonga, pepe in Niue, toroire or tororire on Ma'uke, Atiu and in Tahiti, kavakava in Miti'aro, and torokava on Aitutaki.) The Schleinitzia is a small tree, common in littoral forests throughout its range, where in very favourable conditions it can reach 15 metres in height, although more often it would be about half that; the trunk may be up to 45 cm in diameter. The leaves are branchlets of 7-13 pairs of pinnae, each with 25-35 pairs of leaflets. It has white flowers, with fruits pods 5-12 cm long and a little less than 2 cm wide, each with 8-15 seeds. Its durable timber is sometimes used for house posts in the Cook Islands, and for making handicrafts in Tonga.
Schleinitzia insularum is one of the characteristic trees of these forests near the coast. In the Cook Islands (and probably in other high islands with similar geology) it is associated with Hernandia nymphaefolia, Hibiscus tiliaceus, Pandanus tectorius, Scaevola taccada and Barringtonia asiatica, in the coastal forest environment. It is also an associate of another set of tree species, including Sophora tomentosa and Pipturus argenteus in the makatea forests further inland and at higher altitudes. The makatea zone is formed by the remnant of raised coral reefs, with cracks in the limestone filled with earth and debris, sometimes producing a rather impoverished soil but at other times a rich growing environment. (See the paper by Janet Franklin and Mark Merlin (1992), details in the Bibliography, for more information about this habitat.)
Information about this plant is hard to come by, apart from its mention in lists of plants growing in littoral habitats in many of the islands in its range. These notes here have been drawn mainly from a brief mention in W.A. Whistler's Ethnobotany of the Cook Islands, the paper by Franklin and Merlin, the Cook Islands biodiversity database, and the entry in Volume 3, pp. 65-67 of the Flora Vitiensis Nova by Albert C. Smith. Although it is widely distributed in the South Pacific, and has been found useful in at least some places, local names have been recorded for it on only a few Polynesian islands, with only Tahiti and a few of the Southern Cook Islands having one (tororire) in common. Albert Smith (Flora, Vol 3, p. 67) notes that in Fiji the species seems neither common nor well known," and no Fijian usage has been recorded for the wood. A local name has been recorded as Vaivai ni papalangi from Vanua Mbalavu. This species is not mentioned in Mrs H B Richendra Parham's Fiji Native Plants, but she records vaivai as the name for a related species Leucaena leucocephala ssp. leucocephala, a shrub or small tree growing in Viti Levu and Vanua Levu which "yields excellent firewood" (p. 99). This is a nineteenth century introduction to Fiji, which Smith notes has become "a notorious weed which replaces indigenous vegetation". He reports its local names as vaivai and vaivai ni vavalangi (p. 64).
The miro/toromiro in Aotearoa, Pectinopytis ferruginea, is an intriguing bridge between the various miro/milo and toromiro. It is neither a legume nor a mallow, but shares the durable qualities of the tropical trees, the grace and the bright-red bird-attracting fruit of the Thespesia, and its leaves echo those of the Rapanui and Rarotongan toromiro with their paired leaflets.
There is more information and commentary on both the words miro and toromiro, and the plants associated with these names, in the entries for miro and *milo.
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