Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/746

706 A most abundant plant throughout Polynesia, and stretching northwards through Queensland and New Guinea to Malaya and India. I have examined the specimens, cultivated in Mr. Reid's garden at Ahipara, upon which Mr. Kirk founded his C. Cheesemanii. They differ in no respect from the common Polynesian form of C. terminalis, and as they were found in an abandoned Maori cultivation they can only be looked upon as survivors from a period when the species was grown by the Maoris for food-purposes. Archdeacon Walsh (Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxxiii. 301) mentions other instances of C. terminalis having been found in old Maori cultivations, and argues with much probability that the plant was originally introduced by the Maoris on their first colonisation of New Zealand.

2. C. Banksii, ''Hook. f. in Gard. Chron. ''(1860) 792.—Stems slender, simple or sparingly branched, or several from the base forming large clumps, 4–10 ft. high. Leaves numerous, very long, erect below, drooping towards the tips, 3–6 ft. or even more, 1½–3½ in. broad at the middle, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, gradually contracted into a petiole 1–2 ft. long, striate and obliquely inany-nerved, 4–8 of the nerves on each side of the midrib stronger than the rest and either green or red or yellowish; midrib stout, flat above, prominent and rounded beneath; petiole deeply channelled above, rounded beneath. Panicles one or several to each stem, suberect or drooping, very large and lax, much and diffusely branched, 2–5 ft. long. Flowers longer and narrower than in C. australis, and not so closely placed, nearly ½ in. long, white, sessile or nearly so; bracteoles very small. Berry globose, ⅓ in. diam., white. Seeds 2–3 in each cell.—''Handb. N.Z. Fl. 282; Regel in Gartenfl.'' t. 344. C. Beuckelaerii, C. Koch, Wochenschr. viii. (1865) 91. C. erythrorhachis, ''Hort. ex Baker in Journ. Linn. Soc.'' xiv. (1875) 541. C. diffusa, Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xv. (1883) 330.

3. C. australis, ''Hook. f. in Gard. Chron.'' (1860) 792.—Variable in size and habit. Stems of young trees straight, erect, unbranched; of mature ones much branched above or more rarely from the base, 15–40 ft. high; trunk 1–5 ft. diam.; bark thick, rough and fissured. Leaves of young plants scattered along the stem, 1–2 ft. long, ½–1 in. broad; of older plants forming a dense round head at the top of the stem or branches, 1½–3 ft. long, 1½–2½ in. broad, ensiform, acute or acuminate, contracted just above the broad sheathing base but not petiolate, flat, firm, coriaceous; midrib indistinct; veins numerous, fine, parallel. Panicles terminal, erect or drooping, large, 2–4 ft. long, 1–2 ft. diam., much