Origin of the word "Tītoki"
The Tree
Tītoki oil
Medicinal uses and symbolic associations
Commercial aspects
Toxicity
This is a very interesting word, because its apparent cognates are all from Western Polynesian languages. Normally one would expect a Proto-Polynesian word reflected in Māori to have a counterpart in at least one tropical Eastern Polynesian language. The absence of such words could be because over the three or four centuries following the settlement of Aotearoa the word dropped out of use in the rest of East Poynesia. On the other hand the Māori word could also be the result of convergent thinking -- a name incorporating toki would be well-suited to a tree with very hard wood ideal for axe (or adze) handles.
The tree
 Whatever the reason, the Māori word fits in well with its Polynesian counterparts. The Tītoki is a member of the Sapindaceae, and therefore closely related botanically to most of its Tropical Polynesian namesakes. It is a spreading tree growing to about 10m. high, with a comparatively short trunk. The glossy, olive-green leaflets are arranged in 3-7 pairs, with a terminal leaflet which looks as if it paired with the one next below it. They are 2-5 cm wide by 5-10 cm long. In seedlings the leaflets are quite flat with clearly toothed margins, but the mature trees the leaflets are usually devoid of teeth and turned down at the margins. It is a tree of the lowland forests (once abundant in the Waikato, before the arrival of the "men of the axe"), growing from sea level to about 600 m.
 The tītoki has tiny, dark red-purple flowers without petals, which appear (if the tree decides to flower) from Spring to early Summer. The erratic flowering habit gave rise to the saying "Hei te tau tītoki" -- let's decide or do it later, in the tītoki season -- i.e. when conditions are auspicious. When the flowers do come, they are abundant, and coincide with those of the rātā, hence the proverb:
Taute tītoki, whero te rātā i te waru.
The Tītoki matures and the rātā fkowers are red in the eighth month [M&G #2256]
That is, good things come in bundles, or one good thing can lead to another.
The fruit is a strangely-shaped capsule, covered in rusty-brown hairs (as are the young twigs, leaves and flowers). When the capsule splits it will reveal a bright-red aril (a berry-like component) and a shiny black seed. The fruits take about a year to mature, so seeds and fruit may be on the tree at the same time. Tui and blackbirds feed with delight on the arils, and they appear also to have been a favourite with children in times past, although more generally the fruit was cooked for a extended period and stored as a famine food. The seeds also were sometimes treated the same way, but undoubtedly less often, as they were the most valuable resource obtained from the tree. The oil pressed from the seed was highly esteemed, and generally reserved for use exclusively by rangatira. However, in a season when the tītoki were fruiting abundantly, a commoner could become "he rangatira o te tau tītoki" -- a chief for the tītoki season, but afterwards an unscented commoner once more. Christina Macdonald (Medicines of the Maori) states categorically that "the fruit is poisonous and should not be eaten" (p. 70), and Alan Clarke (The Great Sacred Forest of Tāne) warns that "the fruit of the titoki contains cyanogenetic oil which is highly poisonous and should never be eaten raw" (p. 173, emphasis in the original). This topic is returned to in the section on toxicity, below.
Tītoki oil
 Elsdon Best, in his Forest Lore of the Maori, outlines a number of ways in which the oil was extracted from the seeds (pp. 56-9). They all involved crushing the berries and then wringing out the oil in specially woven bags or fabric and straining the oil into special recepticles -- usually small gourds. They differed mainly in whether or not heat was applied, and how this was done. The following account by Ngāti Awa ki Te Teko is included as the Appendix 7 to the book (p. 392).
Ko te hinu titoki; ko te titoki he mea patu, he mea rau ki roto i tetahi mea i ata mahia ano penei me te kati hoiho nei te mahi, erangi kia nui, kia roa; te ingoa o taua mea he kopa whakawiri titoki. Mehemea ka huahuatia ki te kohatu kakā i te ahi, ka rau nga titoki ki roto i te kopa, me nga kohatu kakā; katahi ka whakawiri, ka rere te hinu i te pito o te kopa, ka maringi tonu te wai i roto ki waho. Ka tu te hinu i roto i tetahi tahā nui, ka tikina he kopuru, he piripiri, he raukawa, he rau heketara rānei hei whakakakara i te hinu; ko enei mea he mea rau ki roto i te kakahu tawhito, aha ranei, he mea patu ki te kakahu ka puta mai te kakara; i tawhiti ano e haere ana mai ko te kakara ano kua puta mai.
The tītoki oil. The tītoki were crushed, then put into a receptacle closely-woven something like a saddle-girth, but larger and longer; this thing was called a "kopa whakawiri tītoki" (tītoki-wringer bag). If they were to be heated through with stones heated in the fire, the tītoki were put in the bag along with the stones; then they were wrung: the oil would flow to the bottom edge of the bag and be pressed out. The oil was stored in a large calabash. Then some kōpuru, piripiri, raukawa or heketara leaves were fetched for scenting the oil. All these things were placed inside some old clothing or something similar and pounded to bring out the fragrance; after a while the fragrance would be extracted.
.jpg) The illustration on the left (an engraving from Best's Forest Lore) illustrates the process described in the Māori text, with a press designed for two people, twisting in opposite directions and straining the oil through another closely-woven bag. The plants mentioned were all commonly used sources of fragrance. The kōpuru is the moss Lophocolea semiteres (and some near-identical closely related species), greatly esteemed for its scent; it was used in dried and powdered form to infuse oil. According to Elsdon Best (quoted in Murdoch Riley's Herbal, p. 230) it was also a tohu mate -- if several people were near a patch of this plant and only one could smell it, this was a warning of an impending catastrophe, especially the imminent death of a prominent person.
The term piripiri refers to a group of plants whose scent clings to the skin, including the mokimoki fern (Doodia mollis) with its fragrant fronds. Raukawa is the small tree Raukaua edgerleyi with glossy, fragrant adult leaves which were used on their own or in combination with other scented herbs and oils, as was the gum produced by the tarata tree (Pittosporun eugenioides). The the leaves and flowers of the mairehau, Leonema nudum, were also bruised and similarly employed. Heketara is the tree daisy Olearia rani. This shrubby herb has fragrant leaves and was also planted for its attractive abundant white flowers.
Medicinal uses and symbolic associations
As well as being a valued body and hair oil, tītoki oil also had medicinal uses; it provided a soothing linament for chafed skin, and a kind of ointment for boils, sores, painful joints and even an analgesic for toothache. The oil was also used to anoint and preserve the bodies of the dead. The leaf was noted for its insecticidal properties, and according to Christine Macdonald it provides a sure remedy for insect bites:
"If you are stung at any time, bruise a leaf and rub the juice on the bites. This will ease the pain and take away the swelling." (Medicine of the Maori, p.70)
The wood's lack of durability when exposed to the elements may have given rise to the saying "He peka tangata, apā he peka tītoki" -- "It's a human branch, not a tītoki one", that is, a line of descent
that will live on, rather than a tree branch that will rot away. Although the wood does not weather well it is both strong and flexible, qualities which gave rise to several proverbs in which the tītoki branch represents the esteemed chiefly qualities
of strength, resilience and ability to resist pressure:
He peka tītoki, e kore e whati.
A tītoki branch will not break. [M&G 631]
He peka tītoki, arā he kano rangatira.
A tītoki branch, that is, someone with superior qualities.
Commercial aspects
The strength of the wood also made the slender secondary branches suitable as handles for lighter adzes, and in the nineteeth century its flexibility made it a favoured wood for wagon wheels. The latter use resulted in its being given the English names "New Zealand Oak" and "New Zealand Ash". Settler entrepreneurs also found a new use for the oil. Joseph Banks noted Titoki as one of 15 useful New Zealand plants in his journal (1769), and used the oil for his lamp, and in the nineteenth century it was for a time exported to London as an oil ideally suited for lubricating watches.
Currently the Tītoki seems most notable as the notional key component of a locally made liqueur. According to the manufacturer's website, a legend tells us that the Patupaiaruhe "warmed themselves and toasted friendship with a drink distilled from Tī-toki berries", a potion that "captured the intensity and glow of the earth's hidden fires". The liqueur will enable one to "experience that same heart-warming flavour". It has long been marketed in ceramic crocks shaped in the form of a tekoteko -- the carved figure above the front of a Māori meeting house. Although the prototype brew was made from a combination of kawakawa, mānuka and tītoki leaves, it was not commercially feasible to produce the liqueur from purely natural ingredients, so instead "a combination of nature-identical and artificial flavours" has been used for the commercial product.
Toxicity
The warnings of some writers about the toxic qualities of the fruits, seeds, and possibly also the leaves of the tītoki have been noted above. Many members of the Sapindaceae, the plant family to which the tītoki belongs, do synthesize cyanolipids from which hydrocyanic acid (HCN) is liberated. Although cyanolipids have not been detected in tītoki, it does yield HCN -- the precursor has yet to be discovered. These toxins are generally rapidly broken down by heat; it is not certain whether cooking of the fruit for storage as famine food was a precaution against this (as in the preparation of karaka kernels), or simply an aid to preservation. Because of the potential to yield HCN, tītoki fruit, seeds or leaves could theoretically be the cause of cyanide poisoning, as Rosalind Dalefield notes in the Poisonous Plants section of her Veterinary Toxicology for Australia and New Zealand (Amsterdam, Elsevier, 2017). Nonetheless, there is only one case where this has been alleged to have happened; about 50 years ago the Government Veterinarian thought that the mysterious death of some cows in the Hastings area might have resulted from tītoki poisoning. Furthermore, H.E. Connor, in The Poisonous Plants in New Zealand, noted (p.153) that dry tītoki leaves had been experimentally fed to rats as 30% of their daily ration, which resulted simply in a gain in weight. It would seem therefore that even if the natural ingredients had been included in the liqueur mentioned above, they may have caused no ill effects!
Andrew Crowe, in his Field Guide to the Native Edible Plants of New Zealand, observes that in his How to Survive in the Bush (Wellington: Government Printer, 1972) Flght. Lieut. B. Hildreth "states that the fruits of the tītoki are poisonous, yet there seems to be no evidence to support this view" (p. 59). He goes on to cite the tītoki liqueur as evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately the tītoki element in the liqueur is synthetic rather than natural, so it may still be wise to proceed with caution when it comes to ingesting products from this plant.
Alectryon excelsus - Tītoki
(Fruiting capsules
developing in he tau tītoki (2017). Photo: RB, Te Māra Reo)
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Alectryon excelsum - Tītoki seedling.
(Note the toothed leaves. Photo: (c) Jeremy Rolfe, NZPCN!) |
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