“Passing Maori Memories ”

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7063, 24 January 1933, Page 6

“Passing Maori Memories ”

PUA WANANGA. [Recorded by “ J. 11.5.” for the Times. ] The early flowering large white clematis shows how aptly and how poetically the Maori names originated. When tho canoes left the legendary shore of Hawaiki because of dissentions concerning land and women (not wine and women), their daily lament from dawn to dusk was the loss of their beloved Wananga which was the code oi ethics, memorised for a thousand years only by the Tohunga and his chosen son, and taught by them to certain worthy ones in the Whare Kura (temple of memories). Many voyagers had died from starvation in the heavily laden canoes; but when they awoke on the early dawn of a September day they first saw the festoons of flowering clematis along the fringe of virgin forest. All stood up and cried aloud as with one accord, “Pua Wananga” (it is the flower of our beloved Wananga)—just as we poetically refer to ‘‘the flower of our manhood.” The white flower, the dark foliage, and the downy feathers of the seed have ever 3ince remained a sacred symbol to the Maori. Many New Zealanders prefer it to the larger English clematis, it flowers two months earlier, and in the autumn repeats its beauty to the form of downy seed pods which waft it's seed high in the air for miles around