Page:Through South Westland.djvu/18

XII bushy heads of yucca-like leaves, and sprays several feet long of minute, creamy flowers, whose perfume is heavy and sweet, and full of honey. In the bush grows its near relative with broader, greener leaves (sometimes reddish) springing direct from the root-stock. And these are lilies. The cordyline is a numerous family spreading all over Australia and the South Sea Islands. Cordyline terminalis provides in its roots an important part of the food of the Polynesians. Another member of the family is Phormium tenax, the flax of the settlers, with sword-leaves as much as ten feet long. It has a lofty spike of red-brown flowers, full of honey—decorative rather than beautiful. This lily has a fibre so strong, I have known a horse throw himself in his attempts to break away, when tied to a knot of flax blades.

Then there are the various astelias: some epiphytic, some growing in the damp leaf-mould of the bush—all conspicuous rather for their brilliant berries than for their flowers.

One sometimes finds an upland covered with the orange gold of the Maori onion—Bulbinella Rossii. The spikes of flowers might at first sight be taken for field orchids, but again it is a lily.

Of orchids there are many in the bush—not very conspicuous, as a rule, except Dendrobium Cunninghamii, which is rose-coloured—but as on this journey I did not find either orchids or clematis, I have not mentioned them. The