What Plant is This?
Signs and Labels

Introduction
Cylinder signs
Flag signs (now obsolete)
QR-coded mobile-friendly signs (Current!)

Introduction

A key element in any botanical garden is signage that clearly identifies the various plants, or at least enough of them so that you can know which plant is which. I have often been irritated by signage even in very respectable gardens, because it is difficult to read, or because if you don't know anything about the plant it identifies, it is highly ambiguous because there are several quite different plants to which the sign could relate.

We started 2010 as the "year of the signs", and had hoped that by the time the year was out, at least one example of each species with a Polynesian heritage name, and some others, would be unambiguously identified with a "flag label", and the "iconic examples" of different eras, or plants of special importance, would have a "name cylinder" associated with them. It didn't quite work out that way, but enough "flags" were completed to demonstrate the practicality of the idea, at least as a temporary measure. All of these labels were attached to black bamboo poles. The black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) is very durable in the ground, a renewable resource which is plentiful in our environment, and just ideal for this purpose. The cylinders are made of moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis), a very much larger bamboo which also luxuriates here. Both grow abundantly in Taiwan, the island from where the Austronesians set forth to explore the furthest reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Many Austronesian societies used bamboo cylinders as the medium for written messages, so we thought that this was a particularly appropriate form of signage (however, our labels are made of laminated paper fixed to the cylinder with transparent duct tape, rather than incised on the bamboo with sylabic characters!). The signs for the key "Time Travel" plants have been in place since 2008.

The galleries below illustrate the signs and the information they contain.

Cylinder signs

The cylinder signs show the reconstructed Proto-Polynesian (or oldest Eastern Polynesian) name of the plant, and the Modern Māori name derived from or incorporating this, in very large letters, followed by some other information in smaller type. The supplementary information includes other names for the plant, if any; the oldest forms of the inherited name and the scientific names of the plants they referred to; and, where needed, very brief notes about the name itself, or the significance of the plant. Those printed on a white background are for plants included in the "time travel" walk; those for other "iconic" plants are colour coded like the flag signs (see next paragraph).

Flag signs (now obsolete)

The flag signs were to have colour-coded backgrounds -- gold for names of Proto Austronesian or Proto Malayo-Polynesian origin [Stages 1 & 2, words originating 3-5,000 years ago], green for Proto Oceanic and Proto Eastern Oceanic [Stages 3 & 4], sand-coloured for the Fijian and Western Polynesian-based stages [5-8], and blue for the Eastern Polynesian stages [9-12]. There were also to be a few white flags, for names originating in Aotearoa. (Yes, there is some hidden symbolism -- gold for the sunrise and sunset as the Austronesian migrations begin in Taiwan and then begin a new phase of discovery as some of the descendents of the first waves of voyagers leave their new home-base in the Philippines for other lands to the east and the west, green for the forests of northern New Guinea, the Solomons and Vanuatu, sand for the beaches of the islands of the Western Pacific, blue for the huge ocean voyages required to settle Eastern Polynesia, and white for the cloud which enveloped Aotearoa and the long daylight of the summers when the Polynesian explorers and settlers first arrived.)

These flag signs, as you can see in the example (which should have a gold background, according to the scheme outlined above, but obviously does not), had the scientific name, alternative names (if any), and the whakapapa of the inherited name, with some additional notes, on one side, and the related names in modern Polynesian languages (and the botanical names of the plants which each of these designates), along with a small amount of further supplementary information, on the other. We started developing these "flags" early in 2010, but after an intial burst production temporarily ceased; however the completed prototype above, along with several others, did fly for almost four years before disintegrating. There is a photograph of two visitors to the garden inspecting one in the side panel of the "News" page. The upsurge in the use of mobile phones has meant that we have been able to transfer these signs to another medium requiring minimal maintenance.

QR-Coded Mobile-friendly Signs (Current!)

The flags are now being replaced by cattle ear tags with the number linked to a mobile-friendly web page (and a QR code on the reverse, also linked to the same web page), so that the information that used to be on the flags can easily be read on a mobile phone or tablet. As was planned with the flags (and implemented with most of those that flew), the mobile pages have background colours coded to represent the era in which the name originated. The tags are both attached to bamboo poles and (where feasible) hanging from a branch of the tree or shrub to which they refer. Try the example below -- http://www.temarareo.org/mobile/TMRM-164.html -- or, better, let your phone read the QR code (below, right).

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