122
7 The Horticultural Context
Eastern Polynesians who introduced the kumara to New Zealand may have recognized that bringing a significant selection of the varieties grown in tropical Polynesia
offered the best chance of finding ones that would allow for differential adaptation
to varying locations and microclimates within New Zealand. These early Polynesian
varieties were very different from those grown in New Zealand today. Many were
only the size of a finger and were as long and thin as a finger, though, according to Polack whom Best quotes, they were “extremely farinaceous and nutritious”
(p.114). The European sweet potato, introduced by an American whaler in 1819,
which can weigh several pounds, is the variety now grown in New Zealand.
The Lapita-age introduction of the Japanese taro to New Zealand, discussed in
Chapter 3, involved the introduction of a variety better adapted to the higher latitudes and colder conditions of New Zealand than the tropical taro cultivars that
were introduced into Eastern Polynesia. These varietal choices, though widely separated in time, are evidence for a complex horticultural awareness of factors making
for the successful translocation of a plant to distant colonies with varying climatic
and growing conditions.
Thousands of years after the Lapita migrations, we find in the prehistoric
Polynesian descendants of the Spice Islanders a persisting cultural attunement to
factors governing the successful translocation of plants into new environments, of
the need to continually adapt plants to changing soil conditions, climates and latitudes. It is an interesting fact that Maori who, we believe, for over 2,000 years
in New Zealand lived a settled hunter/gatherer rather than a horticulturally based
life nevertheless had different names for the male and female forms of some trees,
in which both sexual reproductive means did not exist on the one tree. This naming points to their cultural awareness of the possibilities of hybridization, a more
complex process than the more common technique of assisted natural selection.
Probably from the earliest times in New Zealand, horticultural knowledge handed
down from the first Spice Island colonists was used to improve forest staples such
as fern and berries.
Human-assisted natural selection and artificial hybridization, then, both involve
persistent efforts over many generations, for it is a continuous, ongoing process.
They also involve a culturally transmitted ability to recognize and breed for characteristics such as taste, vigour and disease resistance, and, in the case of cloves as
we have seen, for such characteristics as intense and long-lasting perfume, taste and
optimal medicinal properties.
Generations of cumulative horticultural experiment and transformation lie behind
the Spice Islanders’ cultivation and exploitation of the spices they grew for trade.
They also underpin the Lapita and Polynesian peoples’ successful colonization of
the Pacific and the translocation there of the plant and animal domesticates that
made survival on remote tropical islands possible. For the remoteness and isolation
of Pacific islands restrict natural means of seed dispersal and inevitably result in
low plant diversity. The Polynesians’ translocations of plants, their past and continuing genetic engineering of some plants and human-assisted adaptation of others,
enabled them to create an intensive horticulture on Pacific islands that was able
to sustain remarkably large human populations. The adaptations required cannot
7 The Horticultural Context
Eastern Polynesians who introduced the kumara to New Zealand may have recognized that bringing a significant selection of the varieties grown in tropical Polynesia
offered the best chance of finding ones that would allow for differential adaptation
to varying locations and microclimates within New Zealand. These early Polynesian
varieties were very different from those grown in New Zealand today. Many were
only the size of a finger and were as long and thin as a finger, though, according to Polack whom Best quotes, they were “extremely farinaceous and nutritious”
(p.114). The European sweet potato, introduced by an American whaler in 1819,
which can weigh several pounds, is the variety now grown in New Zealand.
The Lapita-age introduction of the Japanese taro to New Zealand, discussed in
Chapter 3, involved the introduction of a variety better adapted to the higher latitudes and colder conditions of New Zealand than the tropical taro cultivars that
were introduced into Eastern Polynesia. These varietal choices, though widely separated in time, are evidence for a complex horticultural awareness of factors making
for the successful translocation of a plant to distant colonies with varying climatic
and growing conditions.
Thousands of years after the Lapita migrations, we find in the prehistoric
Polynesian descendants of the Spice Islanders a persisting cultural attunement to
factors governing the successful translocation of plants into new environments, of
the need to continually adapt plants to changing soil conditions, climates and latitudes. It is an interesting fact that Maori who, we believe, for over 2,000 years
in New Zealand lived a settled hunter/gatherer rather than a horticulturally based
life nevertheless had different names for the male and female forms of some trees,
in which both sexual reproductive means did not exist on the one tree. This naming points to their cultural awareness of the possibilities of hybridization, a more
complex process than the more common technique of assisted natural selection.
Probably from the earliest times in New Zealand, horticultural knowledge handed
down from the first Spice Island colonists was used to improve forest staples such
as fern and berries.
Human-assisted natural selection and artificial hybridization, then, both involve
persistent efforts over many generations, for it is a continuous, ongoing process.
They also involve a culturally transmitted ability to recognize and breed for characteristics such as taste, vigour and disease resistance, and, in the case of cloves as
we have seen, for such characteristics as intense and long-lasting perfume, taste and
optimal medicinal properties.
Generations of cumulative horticultural experiment and transformation lie behind
the Spice Islanders’ cultivation and exploitation of the spices they grew for trade.
They also underpin the Lapita and Polynesian peoples’ successful colonization of
the Pacific and the translocation there of the plant and animal domesticates that
made survival on remote tropical islands possible. For the remoteness and isolation
of Pacific islands restrict natural means of seed dispersal and inevitably result in
low plant diversity. The Polynesians’ translocations of plants, their past and continuing genetic engineering of some plants and human-assisted adaptation of others,
enabled them to create an intensive horticulture on Pacific islands that was able
to sustain remarkably large human populations. The adaptations required cannot