The trees known as toatoa are podocarps which have replaced their leaves with flattened leaf-stems or branchlets known as phylloclades. Very young seedlings have needle-shaped true leaves, but these disappear once the emerging phylloclades are well developed. There are three tree species named toatoa: one, Phyllocladus trichomanoides, (also known as tānekaha) is found througout the North Island and in Northern Marlborough and Nelson in the South Island, and another, P. toatoa, is confined to the northern part of the North Island. The third, Phyllocladus, P. alpinus, is found mostly in montane areas from the Coromandel peninsula south, and known as "Mountain Toatoa" in English. There is also a woody herb, Haloragis erecta, known as toatoa. This plant has some medicinal properties, and has gained notoriety as a strong and persistent weed.
 The tree names are a reduplicated form of the Polynesian cognate, Toa, a term which designates the "Ironwood", Casuarina equisetifolia, throughout Polynesia, except Hawai'i and Aotearoa (image showing leaves, male and female flowers, and fruit on left). This tree. native to Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific as far as Tonga, is one of the canoe plants carried throughout Polynesia, but only the name reached the extremities: toatoa in Aotearoa, and koa (Acacia koa) in Hawai'i. In Rapanui the word toa signifes sugar cane, but this is a comparatively recent coinage, adapted from Tahitian tō. By coincidence, in many parts of Polynesia toa is also a term which in ordinary language refers to bravery and strength. This word has a different ancestry, from Proto Polynesian *to'a (the form it still takes in Tongan and Rapanui), but analogically the plants designated by this word, irrespective of ancestry, do have some of the qualities of the warrior.
 The toatoa a.k.a. tānekaha, Phyllocladus trichomanoides, grows to between 20 to 25 m. in height with a trunk up to a metre wide and is characteristic of dry areas at the edges of the forest where there is plenty of light -- something it shares with its Hawaiian near-namesake the koa. The male flowers are produced in catkins clustered at the tips of the branches (as shown in the photo on the left), while the female flowers emerge from the edges of the phylloclades. Individual trees produce both male and female flowers, i.e. the species is monoecious. It flowers in Spring and the fruits develop from early summer until mid-autumn. The seeds are attached to the end of a crinkled capsule, and germinate readily when fresh.
According to Murdoch Riley (Herbal, p. 434), this tree draws its Māori ancestry from the union of Tāne and Tūwaerore (who is also the mother of the rimu). Because of the close association with Tāne, the leaves of the tānekaha were used to line graves.
The bark is a source of colour-fast fade-resistant dyes -- red-brown naturally, but with the addition of other elements a variety of colours is obtainable (e.g. the addition of puriri bark will give a yellow dye). Tānekaha bark was used to dye khaki uniforms during the First World War, and in the late 19th Century the bark was exported to London for dying gloves yellow, red, pink and fawn.
I have observed young saplings of this tree bent double and then after a few months straighten themselves and gradually transform the crooked stem into a fully-erect, straight trunk. I had heard that this habit could be taken advantage of for producing walking sticks, and it would appear that this is also the case with P. toatoa (see below). It is possibly at this stage that beautiful mottled walking sticks were developed from tānekaha -- Laing & Blackwell (Plants of NZ, p. 79) note that if the growing stem were bruised at regular intervals, sap from the tannin-rich bark will stain the white wood, giving it a beautiful mottled appearance. Alan Clarke (The Great Sacred Forest, p. 250) reports that if a crack or fissure was noticed in the last stages of shaping a canoe hull, the hull was floated and filled with tānekaha bark and filled with water, and then left for a month or so for the tannic compounds in the bark to fill up the crack.
  Phyllocladus toatoa is generally slightly smaller than P. trichomanoides, but can still reach 25 metres in favourable environments. It prefers damper habitats than the tānekaha, generally growing on infertile, poorly drained and swampy land. It has a bushier habit than the tānekaha, and trees may have several trunks. Some will be monoecious, and others have flowers of only one sex. The wedge-shaped male cones (illustrated on the left) occur in clusters of between 5 and 25 at the ends of branches; the female cones (right) are on very short stalks at the base of phylloclades. The branches are arranged in distinct whorls. The roots are also often butressed (as is common with trees preferring damp locations). The black seeds emerge held at the base by a white tissue from the end of the capsule. The bark of this species is also rich in tannin.
The Mountain Toatoa, Phyllocladus alpinus, is much smaller than the other two species, trees reaching only about 6 meters. It is more widely distrinuted, from the Kaingaroa Plain southward in the North Island, and throughout the South Island, mainly in montane environments, but sometimes being found at lower altitudes. It generally has rather attenuated dark green phylloclades. (There is a form with yellow phylloclades which may be described as a separate species -- see the NZPCN fact sheet by Dr Peter de Lange on Phyllocladus alpinus for more details.) P. alpinus has the ability to layer itself by letting the branches droop right to the ground, a step further than the tānekaha, and then rise again after rooting, producing a small grove of trees with the originator at the centre.
 The name of the other toatoa, Haloragus erecta ssp. erecta , probably indirectly reflects Proto-Polynesian *to'a, as a tribute to its strength and endurance, rather than the tree name. Murdoch Riley (Herbal, p. 464) quotes the missionary and part-time botanist Rev. Richard Taylor writing about this plant in 1848:
Toatoa, strong hardy weed; the infusion of its leaves used for all scrofulous diseases, also the juice expressed.
It exhibits the same qualities a century and a half later: Buce Roy et al. (Common Weeds, 2004, p. 183) comment that it is "Widespread in open bush and common along railways and road-sides because of its tolerance of herbicides. It also grows at the base of hedges, especially in South Taranaki".
He otaota toa indeed. This herb is endemic to Aotearoa, and occurs throughout the country, including the Kermadec, Stewart and Chatham Islands. It is also known as "fireweed" as it is one of the first plants to appear after a fire. It is found naturally on dry hillsides and recently disturbed or cleared ground. This toatoa grows only 1 - 3 ft. high. It has 4-angled stems and produces a 4-angled nut from minute green flowers on drooping terminal racemes. Its habit of growth is well illustrated in the inset photograph; there is a more elegant portrait in the gallery below.
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Photographs: The sources of the photographs in the galleries are acknowledged in the captions. Those in the text are, in order, [1] Causarina equisetifolia, flowers, fruit and leaves, photo (c) Gerald McCormack, CIBP; [2] Phyllocladus trichomanoides, male catkins, photo (c) Wayne Bennett, NZPCN; [3] Male cones of P. toatoa, [4] Female cones of P. toatoa, and [5] Haloragis erecta, all photos by John Smith-Dodsworth, (c) NZPCN. We are grateful to all those who have given us permission to use their work.
Phyllocladus alpinus - Mountain Toatoa
(Photo (c) Mike Theisen, NZPCN)
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Haloragis erectus ssp. erectus - Toatoa
(Stokes Valley, Wellington. Photo (c) Jeremy Rolfe, NZPCN) |
Phyllocladus toatoa - Toatoa (Foliage.)
(Awakino. Photo: (c) Bill Campbell, NZPCN)
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Phyllocladus trochomanoides - Toatoa, Tānekaha
(Foliage. Te Māra Reo.) |
Phyllocladus alpinus - Mountain Toatoa
(Male flower buds. Photo (c) Mike Theisen, NZPCN)
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Phyllocladus alpinus - Mountain Toatoa (Fruit)
(Ruapehu. Photo: (c) John Braggins, NZPCN) |
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