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 seaweed on rocks at low tide.
 
Their descendants who sailed to Philippines 4000 years ago used alomot, and later lumot, for moss (which was inedible); but used limu for seaweeds (which they ate), both on tidal rocks and in deeper water.
The Austronesians then kept the name limu for seaweed as they migrated to north-east New Guinea, then the Solomons, then Samoa and Tonga.

Islanders in the Pacific adopted differ-ent dialect words so that when they visited other islands, their hosts would know for sure where they were from.

So in the Tahitian, Tuamotuan and Cook Islands, they lowered their tongues a little, rolled them like Scottish do, and called seaweed /r/imu. English speakers keep their tongues flat and say [ɹ̠]imu.

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 these named these trees
And to avoid confusion, seaweed here is usually called rimurimu.

When you stop for a rest later on, you can read some MORE fun facts about rimu.


A. Bushmen called rimu "Red Pine,"and indeed rimu trees do have cones. But you can eat them! Like the northern world's pines and cedars, rimu trees are
called gymno-sperms
with naked-seeds on cones.

All cones have a central axis bearing seeds and scales, but the rimu's cones have evolved to become small enough to be swallowed by birds. The cones have just one seed, and a fleshy red axis. Birds' wings can carry rimu seeds much further than than the little wings on the pine cone seeds, eh?
        
   

"Other Podocarps in this forest with similar cone-fruits that you can eat are totara and kahikatea. Use your Aotearoa app to identify them. But don't eat too many!

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B. 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 bushman's trigonometry to measure the height of one?

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C. You can follow 7000 years of variation from the word omo-omotan to the word rimu, and thus the migration routes of the ancestors of Maori, on this MAP. Touch the dots. How many stone tools do you think were sharpened, how many voyaging waka built with with them, how many ropes and sails hand-woven.... to get from Formosa to Aotearoa?

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