The ethnobotany of Cordyline fruticosa (L.) A. Chev.: The 'Hawaiian ti plant'.

摘要

This ethnobotanical study of one plant species, Cordyline fruticosa A. Chev., covers historical and ethnological data on names, mythical origins and ceremonial uses as well as botanical facts about the plant commonly known as ti. A literature search, supplemented by field work in the Tongan Islands, provides the data base. While plant traits like hardiness, leaf qualities, and the redness of some varieties qualify ti for certain uses, they do not answer the question: Why have many different groups of people treated this plant as a sacred symbol?;From the rumbim of the Maring Kaiko rituals to the ti of Polynesia, Cordyline fruticosa appears to have been cultivated for its supernatural efficacy as well as for its usefulness as boundary marker, wrapping material, etc. It was central to house altars dedicated to supernaturals for whom major sacrifices were made. Shamans used the branches while healing (although no medicinal efficacy has been demonstrated). In New Guinea and Island Melanesia, it served as a mega-totem, a Tree representing domestic life, the counterpart of a Rainbow Serpent. There, reddish ti often grew at altars and beside men's houses. Everywhere, these places were associated with dragon-like forms, the rites that went on there amounting to alchemy of life with red Cordyline as a plant equivalent of cinnabar, comparable to "dragon's blood" from resin-bearing Dracaena trees in Africa and Arabia. In Polynesia, two reversals took place: (1) Green ti became the plant of choice for ritual use; and (2) ti rhizome became acceptable as a food. Firewalking ceremonies performed before cooking ti were desacralization rituals. The firewalkers avoided a dragon-like, androgynous supernatural, said to destroy human souls in an earth oven, and then ate the root of the Tree of Life.;This plant had meaning that far exceeded that attributable to its nature as a botanical species. People used ti to facilitate communication between the living and the dead, devising rituals that operated within limits set by concepts about the plant and its mythical identity. In the hands of ritualists, its effectiveness depended more upon this than upon its physical characteristics.