Silly me

[Fyron]

Elowan said:
I thought the types only got flagged when the research had been accomplished but it seems otherwise.

There is nothing special about the colonization abilities or technologies. They function just like everything else, except that the game will assign 1 level of 1 technology that provides a component (any component) with the colony ability that matches your HW type. There is no overall "ability to colonize" to be researched, just abilities on components that happen to become available with those tech areas.