What’s in a name?

Understanding names can often help one understand a species better, and at their best names also open up stories and cultural understandings of a species. Clianthus puniceus, aka kākābeak, aka kōwhai-ngutu-kākā is an endangered plant species that the Motuihe Trust is privileged to be working with. Let’s get to know what the various names for this plant mean.

Starting with the scientific name. This is in two parts - the first part ‘Clianthus’ is the plant’s genus. A genus is a group of species that are gathered together by their relatedness - you could think of it as being equivalent to your immediate family. In the case of this particular genus it only has two members - both of which are species of our native kākābeak. Clianthus comes from the Greek ‘klios’, meaning glory and ‘anthos’ meaning flower, which come together to mean glory-flower, which seems pretty fitting! The second part of the scientific name ‘puniceus’ is the species name, which is unique to it. Puniceus means blood red, a reference to the flaming colour of kākābeak flowers. So, put all together the scientific name for kākābeak means ‘blood-red glory-flower’. 

Scientific names can be a bit daunting because of all the Latin and Greek which they are often composed from, however they are very useful. They provide an understanding of relatedness through the inclusion of the genus ‘epithet’ (which means title or name). Much like human families, plants in the same genus often share traits and commonalities that can help you understand them better. Scientific names are also useful because they are precise. Every species has one unique name and so knowing this ensures that you are dealing with this, and no other species, which avoids a surprising amount of confusion and misunderstanding!

Now we come to common names. These can be a bit more tricky than scientific names, because even though they belong to more commonly spoken languages, there can be many different names for a single species, sometimes with different names used in different locations. Or, there may be a common name that is shared by lots of different species, even quite unrelated ones. This isn’t to say common names aren’t useful though and they often provide interesting insight into ways that people have used or observed plants. 

For many of our native species, the common name used in English has borrowed from Te Reo Māori (think kauri, kōwhai and tūī). Kākābeak is another example, albeit an abbreviation and part-translation of the full Te Reo name. It is also an example of a name which is applied to more than one species - both of our two native species of Clianthus are called kākābeak. They do look very similar, which is often the case when a single common name is used for multiple species (kōwhai is another example of this - there are actually eight different species native to Aotearoa/NZ!).

The Te Reo Māori name for Clianthus puniceus is kōwhai-ngutu-kākā. Starting at the end and moving back through the name: 'kākā' is the name for our raucous and charming forest parrots, which are fond of nectar and would most likely have once been among the pollinators of this plant. 'Ngutu' means nose, and in this case the nose of the kākā: i.e. the beak. This part of the name is where the English name kākābeak comes from. It also describes the curving petals of the flowers, which are shaped like the beak of a kākā. The ‘kōwhai’ part of the name describes the plant as being grouped with kōwhai, most likely because of the foliage, which is extremely similar to kōwahi leaves. In fact, kōwahi and kākābeak belong to the same plant family and are indeed closely related. Thus kōwhai-ngutu-kākā means the kākā-beak-kōwhai.