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As far as we can tell, the word “miro” was first used, in the form *milo, by those Austronesian wayfarers 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. There are special qualities to this tree, however, which undoubtedly were noted by the early Polynesian explorers, and which account for its name and variations if it being used for superficially very different trees in Aotearoa, Rapanui and the Cook Islands. These are discussed in the page for the Proto-Polynesian name.
Miro in Aotearoa
The tree known as Miro in Māori is sometimes called "brown pine", from the colour of the wood, or "plum pine", from the appearance of the ripening "fruit". Like the other podocarps, it is a conifer, but these trees belong to quite a different family from the pines. New Zealand's podocarps are among the oldest trees in the world, the relics of ancient Gondwanaland, which as a group can be traced back almost 200 million years. All species found here are unique to New Zealand. Some of them, such as kahikatea and rimu, can be traced directly back to the time when New Zealand first started separating from the continent, more than 70 million years ago. Kahikatea can be traced back in New Zealand at least 110 million years; along with totara, miro evolved much more recently -- it's fossil pollen goes back only about 10 to 15 million years from the present. Although it is a characteristic tree in the podocarp-kauri forests of northern New Zealand (Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Coromandel, Auckland and Northland), miro is found naturally scattered through lowland forests throughout New Zealand, including Stewart Island.
It is a tall, emergent forest tree (that is, it pops its head out through the forest canopy formed by the broadleaved species among which it grows). A mature tree will stand as much as 25-35 metres high. When it matures it has a clear trunk with a rounded head, but in young trees, the graceful juvenile foliage clothes the whole tree until it is 7 or 8 metres high. The leaflets are arranged in flattened, opposite pairs on the branchlets, with longer, lighter-green leaflets up to 3 cm. long and tapering more sharply towards the end of the branchlet than the shorter (15 to 20 mm) slightly wider (2-3mm) leaflets on the mature trees. The mature foliage is well-illustrated in the inset photograph of the fruit (below), and the larger one in the gallery above.
 The pollen (male) cones occur singly, distributed rather sparingly and irregularly along the branchlets, and stand upright on the branchlets when mature. The ovules (female flower buds) also occur singly, enclosed in several scales at the end of a small stalk in the spaces between the branchlets, but are more generously and regularly arranged. The fruits, which technically are seeds enclosed in a fleshy outer layer, are bright red, with purplish bloom when ripe. On a fruiting tree, this looks a bit like bunches of fruit, but there is only one to each small stalk. They do look very much like small plums, each one about an inch in diameter. They are the favourite food of the kererū (the native wood pigeon), and in the days when birds were an essential part of their diet, the Māori devised ingenious methods for snaring pigeons, taking advantage of the fact that the fruit made the birds thirsty, so they could be snared at carefully placed water troughs. Trees renowned for their abundance of fruit would be given proper names, and only certain individuals would have the right to snare the birds that visited them. These trees live for hundreds of years, like so many of our native timbers, so a productive miro tree would have been an extremely valuable asset to its guardian.
The special gourmet quality of meat from kererū fed with miro is indicated by its being referred to in traditional Māori poetry:
Kia werohia koe ki te manu kai miro
I runga o Titi'.
[For you they will spear the miro-eating bird
From the heights of Titi'.]
- He Tangi mö Te Hiakai", Ngā Mōteatea Part 1, p.232-3]
If you were lucky, you could probably have bagged a kererū or two simply by waiting under a miro tree when the berries were ripe -- as the proverb relates:
Ko te kūkū horo tāepa
The kererū tumbles off its perch. [M&G, #1557]
The kererū will sometimes carry on eating ripe miro berries, which will start fermenting in its crop, until it falls in a drunken stupor to the ground below!
The modern gourmet can still taste the delights of miro-flavoured poultry without contravening the law relating to protected birds like the kererū. According to my friend the distinguished Ngāti Maniapoto kaumatua Dr Tui Adams, chicken stuffed with ripe miro berries is a delight to eat, whether prepared in the kitchen oven or the hāngi. Some Māori restauranteers are also using miro berries and other traditional food sources in new upmarket dishes.
  The trees flower generally in October and November; male (left) and female (right) flowers are borne on separate trees. The fruit will develop and slowly ripen through the winter, becoming fully ripe between November and April, but they are not yet fully mature. Even if they have been processed by a kererū, they will still take anything from 18 months to four years after planting to germinate. If you are patient, they will germinate best a summer or two after you planted them if they are lightly pressed into moist (but not wet) potting mix covered with a layer of leaf-litter. The seedlings transplant easily, but naturally prefer a shady spot. Although they do seed abundantly, miro do not appear to like each other’s company; even though passing though the kererū does not facilitate the quicker germination of the seeds, the birds nevertheless have been important to the tree’s survival by distributing the seeds through the forest. A favourite spot for miro seems to be along the top of a ridgeline. Since they poke their heads above the canopy, pollination from trees some distance away is not a problem. Very few groves of miro have been discovered; I would suspect that at least some of those that have been noted are the result of human intervention. Although they are well-protected inside the forest, miro will also will assume a craggy appearance when they emerge above the canopy in exposed locations, as in one of the photographs in the gallery below,
 The bark may be very dark, and looks a bit like a hammer-beaten metal (see the photograph of a miro trunk in the gallery below). If the bark is injured, resin will ooze out it -- this is one way to distinguish the miro from its relative the mataī (Prumnopitys taxifolium), which does not bleed in this way.
The sapwood is light golden brown, and the heart wood darker, extremely strong, heavy, and often beautifully figured. However, although the timber is excellent for flooring, furniture, and other indoor uses, it is not durable if exposed the moisture, so, probably fortunately, would be no use for fence posts or house piles.
Miro oil, pressed from the seeds and infused with fragrant herbs (such as the kāretu grass), was traditionally used by Māori for cosmetic purposes. The oil and the gum both have antiseptic properties and the gum (obtained by incising the tree or crushing bark) was used by Māori and bushmen alike for treating wounds.
While miro was a commercially important tree in the days when native forests were fair game, the comparatively slow growth rate of this and other native trees has discouraged many would-be users from considering planting such trees for sustainable harvesting. However the hundred-year cycle which wood-users in many other parts of the world accept as normal is also slowly becoming seriously considered in New Zealand. A few years ago, for example, a furniture designer and manufacturer who used a number of native timbers, including miro, announced a replanting programme with this in mind.
The oldest Miro in Te Māra Reo was planted about 1979. In 2007 it was still graced by the elongated feathery juvenile foliage illustrated in the inset on the left, above, but by 2022 it has developed into a stout small tree, about 5 metres high and starting to emerge from its juvenile phase. Another miro seedling, given by Dr Ngapare Hopa in memory of Nena in 2007 but not planted out until 2009, by 2022 had become a handsome sapling about 2.5 metres high. No sign of any flowers or fruit on either tree so far!
Gallery
Pectinopitys ferruginea - Miro (Detail of foliage on 10-year-old tree,
Te Māra Reo, Waikato)
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Pectinopitys feruginea - Miro (Detail of foliage, same tree as at left, at 24 years. Te Māra Reo, Waikato.) |
Pectinopitys ferruginea - Miro (Fruiting)
(Photo: (c) Wayne Bennett, NZPCN)
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Thespesia populnea - Milo
(Fruiting. University of Hawaii
Botany Dept.
Hawaiian Plant Collection. Photo: RB.) |
Pectinopitys ferruginnea - Miro (Trunk.
Kaitoke Regional Park,
Wellington. Photo: (c) Jeremy Rolfe, NZPCN.)
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Pectinopitys ferruginea - Miro (Emerging from forest canopy.
Eastern Hutt Hills, Wellington. Photo: (c) Jeremy Rolfe, NZPCN) |
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