38 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



The favourite dye wood of Funafuti is the Nonou* (Morinda 

 citrifolia, Linn.), a shrub growing plentifully wherever soil and 

 shelter could be found. A height of ten or twelve feet is reached 

 by this as a weak, straggling shrub, whose leaves are opposite, 

 ovate-acuminate, large and glossy. The peculiar green fruit, an 

 inch or two in length, somewhat resembles a green strawberry or 

 a small, immature pine cone. The terminal twigs are four square. 

 By the natives the fruit is eatenf medicinally, but they chiefly 

 value the plant as a dye producer. A bright crimson-vermilion 

 stain results from grating the bark of the root with a piece of 

 rough coral and applying lime thereto. The native kilt or titi is 

 thus coloured,! and the red strands in mat patterns similarly 

 produced. Where the natives have more communication with 

 Europeans the Nonou dye is discarded for aniline dyes. At 

 Tonga, Mariner observed the Pandanus leaf, "first soaked for six 

 or eight hours in lime water, and afterwards in an infusion of 

 the root of the nono, where it remains for about a week ; it is 

 afterwards exposed to the sun, and becomes of a bright red ; the 

 root of the nono is of a dark bright yellow, which, upon the 

 action of lime water becomes red." 



Once only was a Cordyline, probably C. terminalis, seen ; upon 

 the north-eastern islet I saw a few plants of this genus about 

 three or four feet high, without flower or fruit. A native guide 

 to whom it was pointed out called it Ti, a name by which it is 

 known from Hawaii to New Zealand ; he added that the root 

 was "allee same sugar." Two species of Cordyline are cultivated 

 in Fiji, where their roots are eaten by the natives. || 



A rampant climber, smothering shrubs and young palms in its 

 embrace, is the Sageta, a "vine" which Mr. E. Betche has kindly 

 identified for me as Dioclea violacea, Mart. The large, purple, 

 papilionaceous blossom is succeeded by a broad pod three inches 

 long and an inch wide, along the flat side of which runs a raised 

 ridge or keel. English residents of the Ellice assure me that the 



* The island in the Tokolau Group, Nukunonou, seems to have taken 

 its name from this plant. 



f " The Queensland Aborigines are said by Thozet to be very fond of 

 the bitter-flavoured granulated fruit." Maiden Useful Native Plants, 

 1889, p. 45. 



" The fruit though rather insipid is eaten either raw or after under- 

 going some kind of cooking in Fiji." Seemann loc. cit., p. 129. 



" The natives of the Shortland Islands informed me that the neigh- 

 bouring people of Eubiana were accustomed to eat the fruits of the 

 common littoral tree Morinda citrifolia (urati), but that they themselves 

 did not eat it." Guppy Solomon Islands, 1887, p. 89. 



^It was doubtless with this not with "red ochre" that the dress 

 presented to Capt. Moresby (New Guinea, p. 79) on Niutao was coloured. 



Mariner loc. cit., p. 209. 



|| Seemann loc. cit., p. 311. 



