Seven thousand years ago, the Yami ancestors of Maori on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan) gave the name omo-omotan to moss growing on the side of rocks and to seaweed on rocks at low tide.
 
Their descendants who sailed to Philippines 4000 years ago used the word lumot for moss (which was inedible); but used limu for seaweeds (which they ate).

They then kept the name limu for seaweed as they migrated to north-east New Guinea, then to the Solomons, Samoa and Tonga.

In the Tahitian, Tuamotua and Cook Islands, they lowered their tongues a little, rolled them like Scottish do, and called seaweed rimu.
 
When voyagers from the Tahitian and Cook Islands colonised Aotearoa, they found it covered in huge trees with branchlets drooping down and swinging back and forth just like seaweed, so they named these trees RIMU.
And to avoid confusion, seaweed here is usually called rimurimu.


KIDS
Did you know you can eat the cones on Rimu trees?

TEENAGERS
Some of the rimu trees in this forest are about 800 years old and almost 40 metres tall. Can you figure out how to use some simple trigonometry to measure the approximate height of a rimu tree?

MAORI HERITAGE
Learn to sing this haunting waiata tangi Rimurimu.