Ngā Rauropi Whakaoranga

Eugenia maire

MAIRE TAWAKE, maire tawhake (Taylor 1870, Conservator of State Forests 1877; name used in the North, Best 1908). 

Best 1908:231 also records puka but says "the [name] is unsupported, and I have little faith in it"); tuhuhi  ( "... very unsatisfactory and might be applied to any swamp-growing tree"); 

Whakoukou (name obtained by J.B. Lee); whāwhākou Hector in Best 1908.
Percy Smith says: "The almost universal name of this tree on the west coast of the Island is tu-huhi, though the people know it also as maire-tawhake, and better still as whawhakou" (Best 1909) 

swamp maire, black maire

Tuhuhi " a tree producing a bright berry agreeably acid.. " ( Taylor)

Berries eaten, especially by children (Best 1942)

Blue dye (Bretts Guide 1883).

Wood and bark yields a black dye (from tutuhi); from whākou, a blue dye (New Zealand Journal 1846).

Bark of whāwhākou used for dyeing flax samples black. See also tāwari, Ixerba brexioides. (Matina of Henui, FCR 1871).

Tuhuhi  " ... the bark and wood producing a blue black dye." (Taylor)

Tuhuhi, a blue-black dye. From whākou "a handsome blue" (McKillop 1849, quoted in Aston 1918b).

"Tuhuhi, which is supposed to be the same as the whākou, whakou, maire-tawhake, or whāwhākou, whawhakou, is a swamp loving tree which produces from bark and young twigs a blue dye" (White, from ms. in Dominion Museum, quoted in Aston 1918b)

16.7% tannin. (Kirk 1889)

Khaki dye (Wall, Cranwell 1943)

Inner bark used to treat ringworm ( Taylor 1848 and 1870).

Related pharmacology in Brooker, Cambie and Cooper 1987.

See Riley 1994 for information on medicinal uses of related plants elsewhere in the world.