Plant Biocultural Landscapes in Māori Oral Tradition

Abstract

Human migration requires developing new relationships with plants. In Aotearoa New Zealand (AoNZ), settled by Polynesians c. 800 years ago, myriad linguistic and conceptual clues in oral tradition invite examination of this process and the contributions of new and familiar knowledge, to understand the intertwining of social and natural landscapes. We used one enduring form of Māori oral tradition, whakataukī (ancestral sayings), to examine biocultural relationships between humans and plants in AoNZ. We asked first whether plant species mentioned are representative of plant family phylogenies in AoNZ, and globally. We then examined the occurrence frequency of introduced and native plants in whakataukī to tease out plant knowledge that connects to prior experience through the Pacific, including cultivation, and consider how people-plant relationships might be influenced by cultural histories. We found that at the level of plant order, the number of plant species recognized in AoNZ is strongly correlated with the number of species recognized globally. Whakataukī tend to mention plants from orders that have a high number of species present in AoNZ but with some notable outliers. The enrichment of whakataukī references to the Solanales and ferns is driven by the importance of kūmara and aruhe/rarauhe, both key cultivated food crops. Cultivated plants as a group are well represented - both those that traveled with the early settlers, and also native species, highlighting the importance of cultivated plants in constructing a new human ecodynamical landscape. Plants used for ceremonial, medicinal, and food purposes also occur, as do gymnosperms and other forest trees with high cultural value, such as tōtara, rātā, and kauri. We consider our findings in the context of a rapid shift from small islands at tropical latitudes to large temperate islands with a diversity of biomes, and the innovation and adaptability of those creating lives in a new land.