Journal Number 98
February 2006

NOTES etc

Did the Chinese bring Spiranthes sinensis?

Have you ever wondered why only one northern hemisphere species of orchid can be found in New Zealand in the wild? asked Mark Moorhouse. Spiranthes sinensis is found in Chinese herbal dictionaries, and is used as an anti-inflammatory.

To explore this further, visit www.nricm.edu.tw/jcm/011/11-2-04.pdf or search 'Spiranthes Chinese herb' in Google.

"Did the Chinese bring Spiranthes sinensis to New Zealand before the Maori arrived?" Mark had been reading 1421: The year China discovered America (ISBN:0965731286) by Gavin Menzies, published in 2002.

"Imagine," the Amazon.com blurb for the book suggests, "great flotillas of massive Chinese
junks, carrying thousands of sailors, craftsmen, and concubines and traveling the world's
oceans. Mapping as they went, they planted crops and left stone structures and colonies all
around the Pacific Rim, along the West Indies, and even the eastern coast of the Americas, as
well as charting Greenland, parts of Antarctica, and the Azores. All of this happened, according
to Gavin Menzies, decades before Columbus crossed the Atlantic.

In fact, reports of noneuropean human remains and woodcarvings washed ashore on the Azores were part of what convinced Columbus that the newly discovered islands pointed the route to Cathay. Menzies provides point after point of credible evidence, from shipwrecks in California and Chinese chickens in Central America to the underwater stones of the mysterious Bimini Road, and argues that the mysterious stone tower of Newport, Rhode Island, closely matches a lighthouse in Song dynasty China.

Sent out by Emperor Zhu Di in 1421 to find the ends of the earth and collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the sea, the voyagers returned to find their emperor fallen and China in chaos. The ships were left to rot and their records destroyed. Still, the stories of exploration were preserved among Chinese historians. Menzies seeks to bring this information to a reluctant West, which has too long favored Columbus's America and Cook's Australia."

On the other hand currently accepted western (europocentric?) theories have it that the Austronesian forebears of Maori left Taiwan around 1600 BC, because migrant Chinese were squeezing them out. Could it be that Hawaiiki, the mythical Maori homeland, is a misty memory in the valleys of Taiwan? Bunun, Amis and Yami are three southern Taiwanese indigenous tribes whose language is part of the Austronesian group. DNA sequencing links them with Maori, in particular the Amis people from the east coast of Taiwan.

James Ihaka reported on the visit of Taiwanese writer Evelyn Ma to New Zealand on a Taiwanese government-sponsored visit to research Maori customary practices and traditions. Mrs Ma said she was "fascinated" by the Maori custom of rahui (prohibition/conservation). All native people of Taiwan still practised some form of rahui over their own ancestral lands or fishing grounds, she said.

The Taiwanese natives have an oral tradition, practise tree-cutting rites and ceremonies for building canoes, tattoo the faces of people of noble birth and have several deities for natural phenomena. Mrs Ma said she was also finding things of real interest in the legends of Maui: "There are stories in Taiwan where a man and his son set off to conquer the sun to make its appearance more regular," she said.

The archeology suggests the Austronesians did not reach NZ until after the Tarawera eruption of 1150 AD. DNA evidence suggests 190 women were in that last push to New Zealand. And there were probably more men, so perhaps more than the traditional seven waka were used. They brought plants and animals with them. Perhaps some of the plants were medicinal; perhaps one was Spiranthes.

Gavin Menzies writes that, according to Maori folklore, when they arrived in New Zealand they had to defeat a tribe of people who were already well established in the South Island. Until now we have called them the Moriori. After killing the males, the North Island East Coast Maori tribes took the females captive as brides and slaves. This explains the pool of Chinese genetics that can be found in the Maori inhabitants of that area today (Ngati Porou, Ngati Kohungungu). Even their physical appearance suggests Chinese.

Did these Chinese emissaries of Emperor Zhu Di in 1421 introduce Spiranthes sinensis into New Zealand among their genes and their medicinal herbs? It seems implausible - while we don't know the exact date of Austronesian/Maori arrival, 1421 is almost 300 years after Tarawera, and by then these seafaring explorers should have been pretty familiar with the South Island. But it's an intriguing thought.