 |
 |
|
|
| |
Prof. Courtney Cazden, with a newly emerged shoot of Phyllostachys pubescens (moso bamboo), native to Taiwan. (Sept. 2010)
[Above] A poroporo seedling among the leaf litter at the edge of the moso bamboo grove.
[Below] Poroporo flower
|
Ngā Rongo o te Wā ~
Notes and News
Introductory Note
This is where we note significant additions, alterations and developments, both to this web site and to the garden itself. These updates are organized with the most recent at the top of the page, so that a bottom-up history of the project is starting to accumulate, which you can read backwards if you start at the top. The latest news is right below this paragraph -- if you want to skip that and go to the short cuts to the archived items, click here.
MOST RECENT BULLETIN!
|
7 November 2010
Today is the first of two major changeover days planned for this site: the launching of the revised versions of the key pages incorporating new headers with built in menus. Before long (we hope) this will be followed by transfer of the whole site to a new server, which will mean that all the pages will have URLs commencing "www.temarareo.org/" rather than the present much more complicated addresses.
The revision of the pages seemed to be taking an interminable time, so it is a great relief to have completed it. It should make the site much easier to get around, and the information on it easier to find. These pages have also been livened up by a lot more photographs and icons. There is a guide to the site as a whole (and the garden) in the new "Finding Your Way / Hōparatanga" Section.
On the new pages we have also abandoned the "Māori" fonts, which we had used on the ones they replace -- instead, we have specified the fonts as Arial, Geneva or generic sans serif, with inbuilt macronized characters. The older pages, including all those dealing with plants and plant names written before November 2010, are still in the old format and incorporate Times New Roman Māori and Arial Māori fonts.
We had a visit from Emeritus Professor Courtney Cazden from Harvard University in September. She was very taken with the moso bamboo (see picture at left), through which the walk to beginning of the "Time Travel" journey usually begins. This plant grows naturally in the mountains of Taiwan and so the moso grove is a good imaginary encounter with the cradle of the Austronesian languages. Two words for large bamboos have been reconstructed for Proto-Austronesian: *betung (Proto-Oceanic *botung), and *qauR, unchanged in Proto-Oceanic. The first didn't make it into the Pacific; *qaur got as far as Vanuatu and New Caledonia, and its reflexes are also found as a generic word for "large-stemmed bamboo" in many Indonesian languages. Had it reached this part of the world, it would be au in Māori. (It is remotely possible, but I suspect unlikely, that au in the sense of a pin holding a mat as an item of clothing is an echo of *qaur, as this was certainly one of the many uses of bamboo in the tropics.) The new shoot which Professor Cazden is standing beside is now a culm about 8 metres tall -- they can reach 24 metres, so ours still have a way to go!
I was very pleased to discover when reading the October newsletter of the Waikato Botanical Society that we have at least one "declining" species of native plant actually flourishing here, but I was also disconcerted to realize that we had not been treating it with due deference! The plant concerned is the northern Poroporo, Solanum aviculare, which is apparently rare in the Waikato and listed in the recently-published volume Threatened Plants of New Zealand as a "declining species". Here in Te Māra Reo it is certainly not declining -- from two original plants we brought here from Auckland via Wellington it has been carried literally from one end of the 2 hectare block to the other. We like the tree -- it has attractive foliage, beautiful flowers, provides shelter and shade for smaller plants, and (because it's rather frost-tender) is an excellent indicator of where the warmer microclimates are to be found -- so we have generally left seedlings unmolested. It's also very fast growing, and we planted some along part of our boundary with a neighbour, to replace the pine trees we had felled. However, the first thing some local people we hired to clear along the boundary did a couple of years ago was to demolish unbidden every poroporo they encountered. This was not part of the plan (they regarded it as a weed), but we would have been a little more perturbed if we had realized that the way the plant was flourishing here was not the norm!
Finally, while in Hawaii in July and on a short visit to the Australian National University in September, and with the help of colleagues in Australia, Japan and the US, I have been doing some research on the migration history of taro, both the plant and the word. This will be reported in the page for taro when I have time to write up the results of these investigations. R.B.
|
Archived News Bulletins:
31 July 2010
15 March 2010
15 January 2010 [With pictures!]
24 May 2009
6 February 2009
15 May 2008
|
31 July 2010
A lot more water has fallen from the heavens since the last update, but there have also been a few frosts, mostly while I was in Hawaii doing some more research, although fortunately those have not been nearly as destructive as the ones we had a couple of years ago. Perhaps warming is accompanying climate change, after all, or some of the more tender plants are becoming hardier! Over the last four months revisions have been made to the introductory, acknowledgements, biographical, index, locations and contact pages. We are planning a change in the formatting of the site which will make the main menu accessible from all new pages and from existing ones as they are revised, as well as improving the overall page layout. This should be in train by the time of the next update, but don't hold your breath! New pages have been added or revisions made for 10 Proto-Polynesian names: *halufe, *mamaku, *kumala, *kaualiki, *kava, *kiwa, *mafoe, *manono, *taraire, and *fapuku. Nine new Maori-name pages corresponding to some of these (or others) have also been completed: kawa, kawariki, kiwakiwa, mahoe, puka, rangiora, taraire, mamaku and wheki. The report of the Waikato Botanical Society's visit at the end of February has also been made accessible from the site, as well as our brief "time travel" guide for visitors. While in Hawaii I visited the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden on the island of Hawaii, and got some very good ideas from the way they run things (this is a formerly private garden owned by the Bishop Museum, but largely dependent on private funding and the help of volunteers to keep it going), some which I hope to implement in Te Mära Reo as the opportunity arises.
Hoki atu ki runga - Return to the top of the page
15 March 2010
A lot of water flowed from the heavens in January and up to the middle of February, but in the month since then only 10 mm has fallen. However, the fifty-odd seedling trees we planted out in January and early February are faring well, although we have given a few that were looking a bit jaded some water over the last couple of weeks.
Despite the drought, some qantum leaps forward have been made. We had a visit from the Waikato Botanical Society on February 27, which enabled us to inaugurate the "Time Travel" tour -- this seemed to interest everyone who took part. We were lucky to have had a visitor from Canada, Mr Noel Francisco, who did the walk a couple of weeks earlier. This allowed us to have a very helpful trial run. Another visitor, Mr Matthew King, shot 11 rabbits and a possum, which was also greatly appreciated.
Eleven new pages have been added to the web site since January 15: six Proto-names (*renga, *piu, *ponga, *feki, *lata, & *kisi); four Mäori names (rengarenga, piupiu, ponga, & kokihi), and a page about how the plants are (or will be) identified with "cylinder" and "flag" labels (this is linked to the "Finding your way around the garden" page). These signs are now in place for all the significant plants included in the "Time Travel" series, and a few others. We have bought a laminating machine and are printing the labels ourselves, which has cut the cost of preparing the signs by about 80%. Minor and sometimes major revisions have been made to many other pages on the web site, and further work on the plant names not yet dealt with is under way. The biggest headache right now is not the lack of water, but the absence of an inward cash flow :).
Hoki atu ki runga - Return to the top of the page
15 January 2010
It's been quite a while since the last update, and money is still a problem, but fortunately we are not quite bankrupt yet (although somewhat too many thousands of dollars poorer), and it's invasions of rabbits and weeds that are the major problem as I write -- I'll include a couple of photographs with this update to give you an idea as to why!
Although there's still a lot of work yet to be done, we are now just past the one-third mark in getting at least minimally informative pages (and some that actually are much better than that) up on the website. As of last night (January 14, 2010), there were 74 "plant name" pages on the web -- 36, covering 47 of the 136 proto-names we have identified, and 38 dealing with 54 of the 144 Maori names (and 91 of the 228 species included in those names). New names, especially new Maori names, are still being encountered, and the figures generally exclude reduplicated forms (but do include affixed forms), so the totals are close approximations rather than 100% accurate! But on any of these measures, we are a great deal further along than we were six months ago.
Also there's another important breakthrough -- you can now do some time travel around the garden, covering 6,000 years of the history of the Maori language while walking 750 metres or sitting comfortably at your computer; there's a link on the "finding your way around" page.
We have not had a serious invasion of ruminants for some months, and the new sheep-fencing right along the east, west and southern boundaries should provide security there, especially along the riverbank (western end), where animals from unfenced neighbouring properties often come up when the river is low. We wanted to completely replant the riverbank with native plants, especially species relevant to the language garden, but after a whole herd of yearlings rampaged through there and did quite a bit of damage to newly-planted trees elsewhere the garden a few months ago (before we had finished the fencing) we have had to give up on that idea for the moment. Because the land on our northern boundary hasn't been used since then I decided to forgo for the moment the expense of re-fencing the 250 metres left to do there and trust that the ad-hoc repairs we and the owners have made sporadically will hold if cattle are put back there. Meanwhile, as you can see in the photograph below, that neighboring property is a haven for blackberries and gorse, along with rabbits, a little discouraging as we battle with them on our side of the fence, but in this part of the world c'est la vie! Just for interest, I've put underneath a "this side/that side" pair of photographs which I took on one edge of my cousins-in-law's farm in South Cotabato, Philippines, in October 2008, looking out to the chemically-fertilized and chemical insecticide-treated Dole pineapple plantation, and in to their 80 hectares of wholly organic orchard using only biological and organic pest control and fertilizing.
|
View across the boundary to the north - blackberry in middle ground, gorse right background; the tree in the top right is in Te Māra Reo [15 Jan. 2010].
|
View from same spot, looking south (Te Māra Reo) -- Kahikatea and harakeke in centre, fig tree to left, Tawhiwhi (Pittosporum tenuifolium) right foreground.
|
View from boundary of Kablon Farm, South Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines -- looking across the surrounding Dole plantation -- monocrop pineapples.
|
View from same spot, looking into the wholly organic Kablon Farm, with intercropping of coconuts, pepper, cacao, papaya, other trees and herbs [22 Oct 2008].
|
|
Hoki atu ki runga - Return to the top of the page
24 May 2009
Well, it's now been a year since this site was first put up, and progress has been rather slow, but it probably will be ready to go quietly public a few months from now, when a few more of the pages about names and the plants they refer to are up. So far 16, 8 historical and 8 contemporary, have seen the light of day, which is fairly glacial progress. However, this should be speeded up soon as more "proto-pages" are produced -- that is, instead of delaying until I have lots of information prepared in web format, I'll try to discipline myself to be satisfied with the basics, and just fill in the blanks later, as anyone who really wants to follow something up can probably find plenty of information elsewhere on the web. There are also 17 other pages on the site (with general information, descriptions of areas of the garden, etc.), so there's already plenty to read.
Money is a worry -- I started to wonder if I had done the right thing in deciding to stay here, let alone set out on the "Mära Reo" project, when a couple of days ago I looked at what it has cost us so far, and then cattle from neighbours on each side of the property broke through (or wandered in from the road -- we're not sure which), and started chomping up a variety of plants -- they all have gourmet tastes! We have also been re-invaded by rabbits from one of the neighbouring properties. The rabbits have been consuming poison with great enthusiasm, which has reduced their numbers but they have not yet been eliminated. However, despite these irritations, for the moment we have decided to persevere, and to explore possible avenues of assistance with some of the practical and financial problems. I also put a direct link to the "How you could help" section of the acknowledgements page on the side-panel of the site's home page. RB
Hoki atu ki runga - Return to the top of the page
6 February 2009
Well, almost nine months have gone by since the core pages were put on line, and nothing had been reported on this page since, although a few things had been done -- new web pages, alas, were not among them. But fittingly, since today would have been Nena's 69th birthday, in the last few days five more pages have been produced: the pages for the heritage word kauri and its Proto Nuclear Polynesian source *kauli, and the profiles of areas 2, 46 and 56, as well as an expansion of the description of area 29, and the addition of the new areas to the interactive location map. A number of new names and species were also added to the on-line list in the months in between, and a few new species have been added to the collection in the garden - although from where I sit typing this I can see about 100 plants which I obtained before I left for a couple of months in the Philippines in October 2008, and which still have not been planted. Meanwhile an embarrassing number of people around the world have expressed enthusiastic interest in the garden, so doing nothing or abandoning the project is no longer an option!
We do have a severe labour problem, as James has been ill for much of the past year and unable to do much labopuring work. I have put in several hours a day when I have been in New Zealand, but relatively long absences at critical periods (e.g. October-December 2008) have meant that, because systematic maintenance has not been possible in my absence, the jungle of weeds has grown up again and the heritage plants have been engulfed once more. We did hire some local workers during the winter and spring, but this was an expensive exercise and although it enabled the southern boundary to be cleared about a metre out from the fenceline, the area around the riverbank completely cleared of unwanted herbage on the surface (a major undertaking, but many of the weeds have since grown back, because there has been no follow-up) and some reinforced fencing put up to lessen the danger of invasion by animals from neighbouring properties - a perennial problem - maintenance of areas cleared the previous year for planting was not carried out, and part of these areas has been overrun by blackberry now 2 metres high! So the $8,150 paid out for these services simply secured the garden from large ruminants, but did little to maintain existing plantings let alone prepare the way for new ones. We spent $1,175 purchasing new plants, but, as noted above, only a few have been planted. A further $1,815 was spent on supplies explicitly for the language garden. When you add these up and include the $25,000 odd we paid for tree felling the previous year, you can see why finance is also a concern.
Nonetheless I am planning to try to find some reliable and reasonably industrious person whom we could employ for a day a week over the coming year to enable us to get rid of the really noxious weeds (blackberry, and to a lesser extent tradescantia and convolvulus are the really menacing ones) and keep them from reappearing by mowing regularly, mulching and so on. I'll organize future planting along the margins of already planted areas, as these can be prepared for expansion, so that things move out from various centres, rather than trying to colonize completely new locations. Most importantly, I'll try to maintain the momentum with the documentation, starting with the basics so a lot of pages can go up and be expanded later, rather than trying to exhaustively research each tree and word, taking weeks or months to get a page ready. I'm also going to "outsource" some of the work involved to the Philippines (like our Telecom company with its call centres), not because it's cheaper (I don't pay myself for doing it now :-)), but because processing and resizing each photograph or calculating the correct ratio of pixels takes so long to do -- if I could just select the photos I want (which takes long enough, given the disorganization of my files) and get someone else to do this tedious work, things would be speeded up enormously. It might possibly be expanded to include putting in all the links and testing these, another vital but time-consuming activity.
That's the grand plan for 2009. By the end of the year perhaps we can "go public" and solicit donations from admirers with a clear conscience, economic downturns notwithstanding -- they won't affect eccentric millionaires! (Widows mites will also be very acceptable, provided they don't have legs.) So, watch the space above this one for news of our progress.
Hoki atu ki runga - Return to the top of the page
15 May 2008
This is the first anniversary of Nena's death, and also the day on which the core pages (including this one) were all on the web for initial perusal and checking by family and friends -- so, the launch day for the advanced prototype.
Hoki atu ki runga - Return to the top of the page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
