New Zealand Flax. 



[JUNE, 



Although the fungus undoubtedly kills the twigs it infects, 

 yet its entry depends on the presence of some previous wound, 

 which, in all the specimens examined, was very small, and of 

 the same general appearance, and, in all probability, caused 

 by one particular kind of insect. It is important that this 

 point should be settled. 



In the case of nursery stock and young trees, the removal 

 of all dead shoots would do much towards checking the spread 

 of the disease, as the fungus is not known to occur on other 

 kinds of trees. 



Phormium tenax (New Zealand flax) is abundant throughout 

 New Zealand and occurs also in Norfolk Island. It grows 

 especially in lowland swamps and alluvial 



New Zealand Flax ground from sea-level to 4,000 ft., though 



(Phormium tenax). some of the kinds, notably that known as 

 the yellow hill-flax, affect localities that 

 are not swampy or damp. If some of the native timber trees 

 be excepted, this plant is economically the most important 

 member of the New Zealand flora. 



Phormium tenax in several different varieties grows quite 

 well in Britain, in any locality influenced by the Gulf Stream, 

 from south-west England and south-west Ireland as far north 

 as the Orkney Islands. As a rule, however, the plant is only 

 grown in gardens as a foliage plant, and, although occasional 

 attempts to extract its fibre have been made in this country, 

 these have rarely gone beyond the stage of experiment and have 

 never been carried so far as the successful establishment of 

 an industry. 



In its native country Phormium tenax varies greatly in length 

 of leaf, in the degree to which the leaf is curved and split at the 

 top, in the general colour of the leaf, in the tint of a coloured line 

 that borders the margin and midrib of the leaf, and in the colour 

 of the flowers and the size of the capsule. As a rule the flower 

 is reddish and the capsule is always three-cornered and straight. 

 There is in New Zealand another species, Phormium Cookianum, 

 of smaller size, with leaves of paler colour, with yellowish 

 flowers, and with a longer, cylindrical and twisted capsule. This 

 species is in other respects almost as variable as Phormium 



