Introduction
Ramarama: Lophomyrtus bullata
Horopito (Ramarama), Pseudowintera colorata
Ramarama in Te Paipera Tapu
Gallery
These plants get their shared name (ramarama) from the way their colourful and variously hued leaves reflect or give the impression of light. Lophomyrtus bullata is often found near streams and in damp places in the bush, and the horopito (Pseudowintera) has peppery leaves which have important culinary uses. Both species and the genera to which they belong are unique to Aotearoa. Both are also among a select group of trees whose leaves are attacked by the caterpillars of the kawakawa moth, Cleoria scriptaria. These ceatures are very clever: they hide among the leaf litter on the ground by day (thus protecting themselves from predatory birds and insects), and emerge at night to chew holes in the leaves of kawakawa, ramarama, horopito and a few other species.
Ramarama: Lophomyrtus bullata.
 The ramarama, illustrated to the left, is a member of the myrtle family, and its relationship to the European myrtle, Myrtus communis, is evident in the inset photographs of the flowers of the respective plants on this page. The ramarama forms a shrub or small tree up to 6 or 8m high. The shiny yellowish-green leaves are thick and leathery, 2.5 to 5 cm long and 2 to 3 cm wide, oval or sometimes roundish in appearance, but with short points at the tip. They are notable for the distinctive blisters between the veins, which gives the tree its specific name (bullata means "inflated" or "furnished with knobs" in Latin). In open situations the leaves develop a noticable red tinge. It has small, creamy-white flowers, often with an orange tinge. The flowers have developed a fail-safe method to prevent fertilization from pollen from the same tree, so that separate trees are required for fruiting to occur.
The small roundish berries are dark red to black, about 1.5 cm in diameter, with a marking like a hot cross bun on the underside. They are much sought by birds, despite a dearth of flesh, and snares were often set on ramarama trees to harvest avian visitors. The ripe berries are said by some commentators not to be particularly appetising, but they were eaten with aruhe (the root of Pteridium esculentum) in times of famine. Murdoch Riley however notes that the fruits and seeds have also been said to have "a pleasant aromatic taste, reminiscent of the guava" (also a member of the myrtle family). He quotes John White (Maori Pharmacopia, 1883) as reporting that the berries were a remedy for those recovering from diarrhoea (Herbal, pp. 393-4). The leaves have been used to treat cuts, ulcers, wounds and bruises. They contain an antispetic compound, bullatenone, unique to the ramarama as a natural source, which has since been synthesized. The hard, heavy wood was one of those favoured for adze handles, and also for poles for water craft.
The ramarama is a tree of forest margins and wooded riverbanks, up to about 600 m above sea level, in the North Island and the northeast corner of Te Waipounamu. My first encounter with it was on a small island subject to flooding in a Northland creek, among manuka and remnant forest; the ramarama was a dominant shrub in this situation, with conspicuous impressive almost bronze coloured leaves. It has been one of my favourite plants ever since. There are now many horticultural varieties available commercially, often hybrids with the closely related Rohutu, Lophomyrtus obocordata.
There is one mention of horopito in Ngā Mōteatea, from an oriori (didactic lullaby) for Te Parekanga (probably from Te Arawa) by Hautu, evoking the sunlight enhancing the glow of its leaves in the early morning:
Tōia ake rā te tatau, ka titiro ki waho rā,
Haea mai rā ko te ata i tua, ko te ata i waho;
Ko te ata e whano ai, e tū te horopito i raro, ē,
Ka ao, ka awatea!
Pull the door ajar and look outside,
Unveil the dawn afar, the dawn outside;
The dawn that reveals the horopito tree,
Ah, the dawn, Ah, 'tis day! (NM #162, lines 12-15, Vol 2, pp. 292-3)
Horopito (Ramarama), Pseudowintera colorata
Myrtus bullata is known as ramarama throughout Aotearoa. The horopito, Pseudowintera colorata, is also known as ramarama and ōramarama, in reference to its gleaming leaves, hence its inclusion on this page. It is one of the "ghosts of Gondwana", plants whose ancestors were present in Aotearoa before its separation from South America and Australia. Horopito is most commonly a shrub growing to about two metres tall, but occasionally can develop into a tree up to 8 metres high. The plant is widespread in forest and shrubland from sea level to about 1200 metres; it is more common at the higher altitudes in the north.
 The leaves are yellow-brown to green above, and blue-green below, generously splotched with red. New shoots in Spring are bright red, most conspicuously so in situations with plenty of light. The leaves have short petioles (stalks), and vary from 2 to 8 cm long by 1 to 3 cm wide. They are aromatic when crushed and have a peppery taste, which makes them suitable for culinary use and infusing in olive oil. The small, slightly aromatic flowers have 6 widely-spread petals; they appear from November to March, followed after a month or two by black or deep-reddish-black oval berries, 3 to 5 mm in diameter (as in the illustration to the left). At least two trees are required for fruit to develop as although both male and female components are present in the flowers, they reject pollen produced on the same tree.
The wood from horopito was used for cooking wekas. It was also one of the plants used to drive away evil spirits. According to Murdoch Riley (Herbal, p. 146) the souls of the dead wore horopito leaves on their way to Te Reinga, where the leaves were also said to be used there as garments.
Sap from the leaves and infusions of bark were used to treat cuts, wounds and skin disorders. The bark and leaves were also said to have analgesic properties.
 The bark of the closely related Pseudowintera axillaris (also known as horopito, but not ramarama, illustrated on the left) was used as a substitute for quinine. This plant also features in a somehat ambiguous proverb (i.e. because of the shared plant name, it could also refer to Pseudowintera colorata, which has similar toughness as a tree and could be used for the same purpose):
He horopito ko te rākau i tū ai te weka
"A horopito was the tree that wounded the weka"
Meade and Grove (#393, p. 71) however suggest that this saying may have been derived from the line in an old song:
Te horopito i tū ai a Weka
"The hopopito which wounded Weka"
referring to an incident concerning Weka, a crew member of the Mataatua waka. He was one of the party who accompanied Puhi when he parted ways with his brother Toroa, the captain on the voyage from Hawaiki, and sailed the canoe to Takou Bay in Northland.
Ramarama in Te Paipera Tapu
 The Ramarama is closely related to the "Common Myrtle", Myrtus communis, of Southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. It was originally grouped by Daniel Solander, the Danish naturalist who accompanied James Cook on his South Sea expeditions, in the same genus, but later botanists reassigned this and another species to the endemic genus Lophomyrtus. When fully grown, the New Zealand species may be taller (up to 6 metres, as against around 2 metres) than its European counterpart, the leaves are more colourful and varied in shape, and the branches are not fragrant like those of the Myrtus, but, as you can see from the photographs of the flowering myrtle to the left and the ramarama above, the family likeness is unmistakable. The plants also have similar, dark shiny berries and thrive in damp environments like the banks of rivers and streams. The ramarama was thus a natural choice for the biblical translators to represent the Middle Eastern Myrtus communis, hadas in the Hebrew original.
Myrtle / ramarama / hadas occurs six times in the Old Testament, in the Book of Nehemia (8:15), twice in Isaiah (41:19 and 55:13), and three times in Zechariah (1:8, 10 & 11). It was one of the trees from which branches were to be gathered for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles (Nehemia), and in Isaiah and also Zechariah the tree represents tranquility and peace after more turbulent times. This quotation from Isaiah illustrates that symbolism:
Ka whakatokia e ahau te koraha ki te hita, ki te kowhai, ki te ramarama, ki te rakau hinu; ka tu i ahau te kauri ki te titohea, te rimu, ratou tahi ano ko te ake. (PT, Ihaia 41:19)
I will plant in the wilderness the cedar , the shittah tree, the myrtle, and the oil tree . I will set in the desert the fir tree , the pine and the box tree together. (NRSV)
In the wilderness I will put cedar trees, acacias, myrtles, olives. In the desert I will plant juniper, plane tree and cypress side by side. (JB)
I will make cedars grow in the desert, and acacias and myrtles and olive trees. Forests will grow in barren land, forests of pine, juniper and cypress. (GNB)
‘Ou te avatu i le lau‘ele‘ele lafulafuā le arasi, ma le setima, ma le atasi, ma le la‘au e maua ai le suāu‘u. ‘Ou te tu‘uina atu fo‘i i le toafa o le perosi, o le titara, fa‘atasi ma le tasura. [TP] (Samoa)
E 'akatupu au i te arezi i te medebara, te sitima, te maire, e te rākau mori; e tanu 'oki au i te berusi i te 'enua marō ra, te paina, e te tasura, i te tanu anga okotai. [BT] (Rarotonga)
There are seven tree names in this passage. In the Māori text five of these are local names inherited from earlier stages in the development of what became te reo Māori. One (rākau hinu, "oil tree"), is a descriptive phrase for the olive, and only one, hita, the assimilated form of English "cedar", is adopted from another language. The impression of change for the better and renewal underlying the original Hebrew text would thus have been immediately accessible to mid-nineteenth century Māori listeners and readers with little direct acquaintance with the trees referred to in either the Hebrew original or the English translations.
It may be noted that in this particular case, the selection of tree names in the Māori text parallels that in the seventeenth-century English-language Authorized ("King James") version, rather than more modern translations like the Jerusalem Bible (and the New Revised Standard Version, the Good News Bible, and other widely-circulated contemporary translations). This is because the precise meanings of many of these plant names is unclear, and recent comparative research, utilizing evidence from Arabic and other languages related to Ancient Hebrew, as well as Ancient Greek and Latin sources, has thrown new light on what specific plants the Hebrew writers may actually have had in mind when they wrote the original texts, resulting in name changes between and among different editions. Nonetheless the species first referred to by a particular word often remains a matter of conjecture and thus open to different interpretations (as is illustrated by the variations in the alternative English translations above). The Polynesian translations also follow the same path as the Māori and earlier English translations in respect of the olive tree: in Samoan it is le lā'au e maua ai le suā'u "the tree which bears oil", and in Rarotongan te rākau mōrī "the oil tree" (mōrī is a now obsolete Rarotongan word for oil, found mainly in Biblical contexts, although it is inherited from Proto Nuclear Polynesian and still used in many Polynesian languages as a word for oil, especially coconut oil, and lamps).
The English-language translators and their Māori-language colleagues have tended to substitute the name of a plant with qualities similar to those of the plant named in the Biblical text, and likely to be familiar to their audience, rather than to attempt to stick rigorously to a literal translation of the Hebrew (or Greek) word in the original text. Hence the predominance of Māori plant names in the verse quoted above. Translators into other Polynesian languages tend to have taken a much more conservative approach. The Samoan version of Isaiah 41:19, for example, in effect leaves the tree names untranslated, following the King James and Māori interpretations of the reference to olives, "laau e maua ai le suāuu" (oil-bearing tree), and adapting the Hebrew words for the six other trees to Samoan phonology, in order: arasi (erez), setima (shittim - plural of shittah), atasi (hadas), perosi (berosh), titara (tidhar), and tasura (teashshur). The Tahitian text follows exactly the same pattern, with "raau hinu" (oil tree) in the vernacular, and the rest Tahitian adaptations of the Hebrew words: arezi, sitima, hedesa. berusi, tedera, and tasura. None of those are words in common use (even some of the letters used in the transcriptions, b,d,s,z in Tahitian and Rarotongan, and r in Samoan, are not used in writing indigenous words), and the text would have to be explained carefully to have its intended impact. Translators into other Polynesian languages generally follow the Samoan and Tahitian pattern, with occasional deviations into the vernacular. In the passage we have been discussing, for example, both the Niuean and Rarotongan translations use adaptations from the Hebrew for most of the plant names, but translate hadas (myrtle) as maire (Rarotongan) or maile (Niue), the name of the fragrant vine used in leis, chaplets and other expressions of friendship and rejoicing. Hawai'ian, however, sticks to the Hebrew-derived hadasa, despite the extensive use of maile in Hawai'ian culture. Tahitian also adopts the Hebrew word, in the form of hedesa, while Niuean uses its adaptation of the Hebrew, hatasi, where the myrtle appears elsewhere (the books of Nehemia and Zechariah) in the Bible.
The shift in the Niuean translations to and from a local word in preference to one adopted from Hebrew for what in the Biblical texts is one plant may have been influenced by the context. The Polynesian maile / maire are shrubby vines of the genus Alyxia. Alyxia stellata is the species found in Niue and the Cook Islands. It does grow as a small shrub in the forest, but perhaps not as large as might be expected in the references in Zechariah to horsemen assembled in a grove of such trees. On the other hand, the early Polynesian settlers seem to have had no hesitation in bestowing the name maire on several large trees of the genus Nestegis, and the translators into Rarotongan have followed this bold precedent. |
