(Image courtesy of The British Library)
Native Species: |
Pseudopanax ferox |
Māori name: |
Horoeka |
English name: |
Fierce Lancewood |
Cultural Significance: |
There is a theory that the Horoeka evolved to outsmart the Moa, giving it a better chance at survival. Dr Patrick Kavanagh found that Lancewood changes its colours as it grows, and theorised that this tricked the ancient flightless bird and effectively stopped the plant from becoming a snack as a sapling. “The lancewood is pretty amazing and unique. It starts out with rigid, saw-like leaves when it’s juvenile but at about three metres in height, the leaves become wider and more rounded in shape. It’s no coincidence that three metres is the same as the maximum height that the largest Moa species was able to reach,” Dr Kavanagh says. |
Description/Features: |
The Horoeka is a Gynodioecious small tree that grows to up to 8 metres tall. The trunk is slender, deeply grooved and ridged lengthwise, bark is mottled grey-white and often finely encrusted with lichens. The seedling leaves vary from light brown to almost black, very slender, narrow, and parallel-sided in the middle, and tapering to a slender base and an acute tip and the margins deeply lobed with hooked ends. The adult leaves, dark or light chocolate brown, oblong to narrowing to a stout petiole 10-20 mm long, veins evident above. The Horoeka’s flowers are racemosely distributed, trending to umbellules in perfect flowers. The Fierce Lancewood fruits are 8-9 mm diameter, brown or purple-brown, ovoid and fleshy. |
Habitat: |
Coastal to sub-alpine (10-800 metres) on established sand dunes (dune forest), in grey scrub overlying pumice stone, on recent alluvial (coarse stones), limestone outcrops, boulders, cliff faces, talus slopes and scarps. The Fierce Lancewood is also found as a sparse component of seasonally drought-prone but otherwise cold and wet alluvial forests. This species prefers drier habitats and conditions. |
Etymology: |
Pseudopanax: Deceptive remedy Ferox: From the Latin ferox ‘fierce’, usually referring to very spiny plants |
Sources: |
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2016/03/how-a-plant-outwitted-the-moa.html
https://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora/species/pseudopanax-ferox/ |