302 Transactions. — Botany. 



or that, indeed, it possessed any interest beyond that which 

 would naturally surround a relic of old Maori times. My 

 ideas on the subject were changed, however, by a visit I 

 received from Mr. D. Petrie, F.L.S., Chief Inspector under 

 the Auckland Board of Education, who has made some valu- 

 able contributions to the botany of the country. Mr. Petrie 

 had never seen a growing specimen of the plant, but, after a 

 careful examination, he was of opinion that it was identical 

 with a species some specimens of which had been recently 

 discovered by Mr. Eeid at Ahipara, and which had been 

 described by Mr. T. F. Cheeseman, F.L.S., Curator of the 

 Auckland Museum.* For this species the late Mr. T. Kirk, 

 F.L.S., had proposed the name of C. cheesemanii, supposing 

 it to be a new species, although Mr. Cheeseman himself con- 

 sidered it to be identical with G. terminalis, a plant largely 

 cultivated throughout the Polynesian islands, especially in 

 Fiji and Samoa, for the sake of its edible root, but which had 

 not hitherto been observed in New Zealand. On the advice 

 of Mr. Petrie, I communicated with Mr. Cheeseman on the 

 subject, at the same time sending him a fresh leaf from one 

 of the plants. On examination Mr. Cheeseman told me that 

 the species appeared to be the same as that of the Ahipara 

 specimens, as well as that of the Kermadec Islands, a plant of 

 which he had growing in his garden at Remuera, obtained by 

 himself ten years before; and, further, that he had no hesita- 

 tion in pronouncing it to be identicil with the Polynesian 

 variety, as he had suspected all along ; and, as its appearance 

 in New Zealand had not yet been accounted for, he recom- 

 mended me to collect all available information on the subject 

 from the old settlers and Maoris in the district in which the 

 specimens had been found. 



For some time all my efforts in this direction were unavail- 

 ing. Most of the information I was able to obtain was either 

 vague or otherwise unsatisfactory. The old settlers generally 

 remembered that in the early days a certain species of ti 

 (Gordyline) had been cultivated by the Maoris, but most of 

 them confused it with the ti rauriki (C. pumilio), a wild species 

 which was commonly eaten but never cultivated. The Maoris 

 were still more unsatisfactory. The younger generation 

 plainly knew nothing at all about the matter, while in the 

 case of the elders my limited knowledge of the language pre- 

 vented my following them into the region of mythical romance 

 into which the lapse of time seemed to have relegated the 

 subject. 



The first reliable information I received was from Mr. 

 J. B. Clarke, of Waimate North, who remembered that forty 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxix., p. 346. 



