''Cordyline pumilio'', commonly known as the dwarf cabbage tree, pygmy cabbage tree or by its

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

names tī koraha or tī rauriki, is a narrow-leaved

monocot Monocotyledons (), commonly referred to as monocots, (Lilianae ''sensu'' Chase & Reveal) are grass and grass-like flowering plants (angiosperms), the seeds of which typically contain only one embryonic leaf, or cotyledon. They constitute one of ...

shrub

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. It usually grows up to tall, although rare examples of 2 metres tall have been reported. It has long leaves and can easily be mistaken for a grass or a sedge. ''C. pumilio'' grows in the north of the

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

from North Cape at 34°S to Kawhia and Opotiki at about 38°S, generally under light forest and scrub. It was cultivated by

as a source of carbohydrate and used as a relish to sweeten less palatable foods.

Taxonomy

''Cordyline pumilio'' is the smallest of New Zealand's five native species of ''

Cordyline ''Cordyline'' is a genus of about 15 species of woody monocotyledonous flowering plants in family Asparagaceae, subfamily Lomandroideae. The subfamily has previously been treated as a separate family Laxmanniaceae, or Lomandraceae. Other authors ...

''. Of the other species, the commonest are the common cabbage tree ('' C. australis''), a tree up to tall with a stout trunk and sword-like leaves, the forest cabbage tree ('' C. banksii'') which has a slender, sweeping trunk, and the mountain cabbage tree ('' C. indivisa''), a handsome plant with a trunk up to 8 metres high bearing a dense, rounded head of broad leaves 1 to 2 metres long. In the far north of New Zealand, ''C. pumilio'' is thought to have hybridised with ''C. australis''.Simpson 2000:69 The genus name ''Cordyline'' derives from an

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

word for a club (''kordyle''), a reference to the enlarged underground stems or

rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

s, and the species name ''pumilio'' is Latin for "dwarf". The common name Cabbage tree is attributed by some sources to early settlers having used the young leaves of related species as a substitute for cabbage. The plant was well known to

, who cultivated it for its sugar-laden roots and stems before its discovery and naming by

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

ans. The generic

Māori language Māori (), or ('the Māori language'), also known as ('the language'), is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. Closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and ...

term for plants in the genus ''Cordyline'' is tī, and names recorded as specific to ''C. pumilio'' include tī koraha and tī rauriki.Williams, H. W. (1971). ''A dictionary of the Maori language'' (7th ed.). Wellington, New Zealand: Government Printer.

Description

''Cordyline pumilio'' is a plant rarely exceeding tall. It is a very narrow-leaved species, and does not develop into the large tree-like form of ''C. australis''. It often flowers while its short stem is leafy to the ground. In older plants the bare part of stem is up to long and 1.5 cm (less than an inch) wide, and not usually very erect. The leaves are 30 cm to 1 metre (1–3 ft) long and 1 to 2 cm (up to an inch) wide, and may narrow above the base into a channelled petiole. The midrib is prominent abaxially, or at least proximally and the leaf margins are slightly recurved. The flower spike or

panicle A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a panicle are of ...

appears in November or December and is up to , very open with slender axes, branched to the second order, with small white or bluish-white flowers irregularly scattered along the branches. The

bract In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, or of ...

s are often small and inconspicuous. The

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s are narrow, recurved and have three nerves. The stigma is short and trifid.Cheeseman, Thomas Frederick, 1906. ''Manual of the New Zealand Flora'', url

pp. 705ff.

Cultural use

''Cordyline pumilio'' was cultivated by Māori in the Waikato district and elsewhere all over New Zealand. Young seedlings were carefully selected and planted out, and after perhaps three years the roots were dug up, stacked in small piles, and dried in the sun. As they dried, the fibrous roots were burned off, and then the roots were scraped and baked slowly in an umu or hāngi, requiring twelve to eighteen hours to cook. The cooked roots were chewed, or pounded and washed and squeezed to extract the sugar, which was eaten with fern root as a relish. Māori ranked the taste of the plant above tī kōuka (''C. australis'') and the other native species, but below tī pore (''

Cordyline fruticosa ''Cordyline fruticosa'' is an evergreen flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae. The plant is of great cultural importance to the traditional animistic religions of Austronesian and Papuan peoples of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Isla ...

'') which they brought with them from tropical Polynesia.

Notes

Bibliography

* * * Salmon J. T. (1973). ''The Native Trees of New Zealand''. Wellington. AH & AW Reed. * Simpson, P. (2000). ''Dancing Leaves: The story of the New Zealand cabbage tree: Ti Kouka''. Christchurch. Canterbury University Press. {{Taxonbar, from=Q5170120 pumilio Flora of the North Island Taxa named by Joseph Dalton Hooker