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Cordyline australis

At 01:36 AM 17/04/97 -0400, Bjarcia@aol.com wrote:
>ive seen an illustration of Cordilyne australis, and its rather a beautiful
>plant. It looks ver much like our native desert dwelling joshua trees, but
>with droopier foliage and no dead leaves all over the trunk.

I guess the photographer pulled all the dead leaves off or your photo was of
a mature tree. Young trees certainly have a lot of dead leaves hanging a
long way down the trunk, but personally I don't mind them. The fibres in the
leaves are very stringy and good at getting wrapped around the mower blade
if they drop on the lawn.

Cordyline australis is endemic to New Zealand so the common name 'Torbay
Palm' is, not surprisingly, a new one to me. The two common names here are
'Ti kouka' (the Maori name, and therefore the original common name) and
'Cabbage Tree'. It is not a palm, although it looks like one, but is
included in the family Agavaceae, although it used to be included in
Liliaceae and was often quoted as being "the World's tallest lily".

The trees are VERY common throughout New Zealand and I've got quite a few in
my garden including some that have self seeded. They obviously like
fertiliser as my fastest growing tree is the one right next to the old
septic tank overflow! They will grow just about anywhere, from swamps to
barren windswept hillsides, and certainly can stand a fair amount of frost
and snow.

The name Cabbage Tree came from the fact that the early settlers used to
boil and eat the young shoots, and presumably they thought it tasted a bit
like cabbage, although I have heard it is more like artichoke. The Maori
certainly used it as a food plant, both the new shoots and the bases of
young leaves.
Tim Dutton		timdut@freemail.co.nz
"Raindrops", Main Road North, Kaitoke, Upper Hutt, New Zealand
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