78 PLANTS OP NEW ZEALAND 



astringent. The young saplings make excellent walking 

 sticks. If the stem, while growing, is bruised by some blunt 

 instrument, at regular intervals, the red dye contained in the 

 bark stains the white wood, giving to the stick a beautiful 

 mottled appearance. 



Phyllocladus alpinus (The Mountain Celery Pine or Toa-toa.) 

 This tree, like PliijUocladus tricJiomanoides, produces no 

 true leaves, but only flattened twigs, which exercise all the 

 functions of leaves. These, however, are very differently 

 shaped from those of the lowland tanekaha. They are 

 clustered heavily together at the ends of the branches, and are 

 thick and fleshy, rather irregular in outline, and usually finely- 

 toothed. The male catkins are found in clusters of from three 

 to seven at the tips of the branches. The female are in 

 cones, the ovules in fleshy cups of a bright crimson colour. 

 The growth of this tree is rather curious. The 

 lower branches bend down in a sweeping curve, 

 rooting where they touch the ground. The tips of these 

 branches, however, rise again, and form the stem of a new 

 tree. This, in its turn, when its own branches are sufficiently 

 grown, will repeat the process and so form another new 

 generation. An old tree will in this way form a series of 

 rings, with the parent still growing in the centre. The tree 

 thus performs for itself the process of layering carried out by 

 nursery gardeners with many herbaceous plants. (There 

 must be, one would think, some difliculty in the ripening or 

 dispersion of its seeds, which has caused the tree to adopt a 

 xiifferent method of reproduction.) 



