NOTE - THIS PROTO-PAGE IS STILL IN THE EARLY STAGES OF CONSTRUCTION!

It seems that this term originally designated cycads and tree ferns generally, with the focus shifting to tree ferns in Remote Oceania. These would have included especially the cycad Cycas bougainvilleana which is found the core Oceanic regions of New Britain, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomons, and the tree fern Cyathea contaminans, which is widespread throughout this area, as well as being found elsewhere in New Guinea and in Indonesia the Philippines and Vietnam.

In Eastern Polynesia it seems to have narrowed to designating ferns of the closely related genera Marattia and Ptisana, and their edible roots. In Aotearoa both meanings are retained, and by analogy the range of meanings was extended also to include a range of edible roots (see the linked page for details, and some further notes about the etymology of this term). It is only the extended meaning which survived on Easter Island, where the term para came to designate a wetland moss which was used for medicine and food. The cognate terms seem similarly to have been applied primarily to a particular root (very likely that of Ptisana salicina) eaten as a famine food in Tahiti and the Marquesas.

A recent revision of the botanical family Marattiacea based on molecular evidence has separated the New Zealand fern formerly known as Marattia salicina from the genus Marattia and also combined related ferns in New Caledonia, the Society Islands, Norfolk Island and the Marquesas with it as a single species, Ptisana salicina. The Hawaiian Marattia remains in that genus.