Toothed Lancewood
Botanic Garden
The Toothed Lancewood, Pseudopanax ferox, is a rare tree of lowland forest and scrub throughout New Zealand. It usually grows with a single stem bearing toothed, brown, juvenile foliage. Only after ten to fifteen years, does it grow wider and greener leaves. One theory is that the brown foliage looks dead to New Zealand’s species of flightless Moa birds. Only when the tree has grown above the height of the now extinct Moa birds does it produce more succulent foliage. The large plant within our New Zealand display was collected as seed in 1981, by the late Dr Mark Smith, former Superintendent of the Botanic Garden.
- Photographer: Nicholas Wray
- Copyright: University of Bristol
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