xxvm MUSSyENDA FRONDOSA 425 



LeucjEna Forsteri 



This bush of the Mimoseae frequents maritime sands in the 

 South Pacific, and is confined to this region. It has been found in 

 New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, Rarotonga, and Tahiti. The seeds 

 sink and the pods dehisce on the plant, so that the agency of 

 currents, unless we invoke the intervention of the drifting log. 

 bearing the seeds in its crevices, seems to be excluded. Sea-birds 

 might carry the seeds unharmed in their stomachs, but there is no 

 evidence bearing on birds as agents in the dispersal of the species. 

 Since the plant has not been recorded from localities outside the 

 Pacific islands, and since it was collected by Cook's botanists in 

 Tonga and Tahiti, it cannot be placed amongst plants of recent 

 introduction. Although growing on maritime sands in Fiji, Raro- 

 tonga, and Tahiti, it may grow inland, and according to Chcescman 

 is particularly abundant in Rarotonga. In Fiji it is apt to occupy 

 newly-formed alluvial land at the mouth of the rivers, as in the case 

 of the Rewa ; but the "how and why" caused me much fruitless 

 speculation, and 1 abandoned the plant in despair. The Fijian s 

 sometimes give it the native name of Serianthes myriadenia, which 

 they then term "Vaivai ni Viti," or the Fijian Vaivai. In Tahiti 

 it is named " Toroire," and in Tonga " Toromiro." 



MUSS/ENDA FRONDOSA 



Musssenda frondosa is the only one of the sixty species of this 

 tropical Asiatic and African genus that extends into Polynesia. 

 This beautiful shrub, which is easily recognised by its conspicuous 

 white, leaf-like calyx lobe, is common everywhere in Fiji, decorat- 

 ing, as Home fitly remarks, in the contrast presented by its golden 

 flowers, its large white calyx leaf, and its green foliage, many an 

 acre of waste, grassy land, where the orange-coloured doves and 

 the red and the green parrots flit to and fro. With its home in 

 India, China, and Malaya, it ranges all over the South Pacific, from 

 the Solomon Islands to Tahiti. Its berries contain an abundance 

 of small, minutely-pitted seeds, 07 mm. or -J. of an inch in size, and 

 weighing when well dried about 600 to the grain. The seeds retain 

 after years of drying the property of clinging to passing objects by 

 means of a few microscopic, thread-like fibres, that arc attached 

 to their surfaces. In this manner they will fasten themseh 

 to the point of a knife, and the observer is astonished to sec them 



