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FICUS 387 



name over the South Pacific, "koka" in Fiji and Rarotonga, and 

 " oa " in Samoa. Like many other Polynesian trees, it has its uses, 

 but there is no reason to believe that the natives have aided 

 materially in its dispersal. 



FlCUS, a large genus comprising several hundred species, attains 

 its greatest development in tropical Asia and in Malaya. It is well 

 represented in the Western Pacific from the Solomon Islands to 

 Fiji and Samoa ; but in Eastern Polynesia the species are very 

 few, and the genus is altogether absent from Hawaii, although a 

 species has been found in the North Pacific in Fanning Island, 

 about 900 miles south of the Hawaiian group (see page 377). 



The Polynesian species are for the most part restricted to the 

 Pacific islands, but there are only two species that range over the 

 South Pacific as far east as Tahiti, namely, Ficus prolixa, the 

 Tahitian banyan, and F. tinctoria. Some species are confined to 

 Western Polynesia, such as F. obliqua, the Fijian banyan, F. scabra, 

 and F. aspera, the last occurring in East Australia. Among the 

 individual groups Fiji possesses probably fourteen or fifteen species, 

 of which, perhaps, a third would be peculiar. According to Dr. 

 Warburg, as cited in Dr. Reinecke's paper, Samoa owns eight species, 

 of which six may be endemic. In Rarotonga and Tahiti we find 

 only F. prolixa and F. tinctoria. The species in the groups where 

 they are best represented belong to three or four sections of the 

 genus. 



The banyans of the South Pacific are represented by three or 

 four species, namely, Ficus prolixa, the Tahitian banyan, found all 

 over the tropical groups of the South Pacific from the New 

 Hebrides and New Caledonia to Tahiti, the Marquesas and 

 Pitcairn Island (Maiden) ; F. obliqua, the Fijian banyan, confined 

 to the islands of the Western Pacific from the New Hebrides to 

 Tonga ; and two new banyans in Samoa, as described by Dr. 

 Warburg in Dr. Reinecke's paper. In my paper on Polynesian 

 plant-names it is shown that the banyans possess two names in the 

 Pacific, one being "aoa," the Polynesian name, found in all the 

 groups from Samoa eastward, and connected linguistically with the 

 Malayan and Malagasy banyan-words ; the other, the Melanesian 

 name typified in the Fijian " mbaka," and represented in a variety 

 of forms in the New Hebrides and neighbouring groups. 



It is probable that the Pacific islanders have assisted in the 

 dispersal of one or two of the species of Ficus, such as F. tinctoria, 

 which they employ for different purposes, but, generally speaking, 

 birds are active agents in distributing the genus. I need scarcely 



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