Nerium indicum Mill.

All parts of the plant is highly poisonous. Leaves are used in cutaneous eruption, decoction of leaves is used to destroy maggots infesting wounds. The plant is also used as rat poison in southern Europe.

Nerium oleander L. and Nerium indicum Mill. are treated by various authors as separate species on the basis of leaf shape, length of protrusion of connectives and the number of teeth of corona appendages. However these characters have not been found to be useful in separating the two taxa.

We have therefore followed Grant, Fosberg & Smith (Smithsonia Contrib. Bot. 17.53.1974) in treating the two as conspecific.

All parts of the plant are extremely toxic. The seed-oil content is up to 58.5%.

An erect evergreen shrub, branches glabrous with milky juice, young branches green. Leaves 10-15 x 1-2 cm, linear-lanceolate, tapering at both ends, acuminate, thick coriaceous, midrib prominent, nerves numerous, petiole 5-7.5 mm long. Flowers white, pink or dark red, single or double in cultivated, form, fragrant 3-4 cm across, peduncle and pedicel hairy, bracts small, 5-7.5 mm long. Calyx c. 6.25 mm long, divided into 5 linear, acute lobes, hairy with gland at the base inside. Corolla tube 1.8 cm long, hairy within, throat narrow, ending in five twisted petals, tips rounded, corona of 5 scales near the throat of the corolla, cleft into 4-7 linear segments. Stamen included, filament short, Anthers connivent and adherent to stigma, connectives hairy, produced upward into long thread-like hairy appendages. Ovary with two distinct carpels, style filiform, thickened upward; stigma two lobed. Fruit 12-20 cm x 7:5 mm long.

Stem to 6 m tall. Leaves very narrowly elliptic, 5-21 X 1-3.5 cm, leathery, base cuneate or decurrent on petiole, apex acuminate or acute. Flowers showy, fragrant. Sepals narrowly triangular to narrowly ovate, 3-10 mm. Corolla purplish red, pink, white, salmon, or yellow, tube 1.2-2.2 cm; lobes 1.3-3 cm, single or double. Follicles cylindric, 12-23 cm. Seeds oblong, coma 0.9-1.2 cm. Fl. spring-autumn. 2n = 22.

Distribution: From the Mediterranean to Persia, China and Japan, common in rocky stream beds, ascending to 5,000 ft., also commonly cultivated and naturalized throughout Pakistan.

Fl. Per.: April-October.

Yunnan, widely cultivated and naturalized in tropical, sub-tropical, and temperate parts [Asia, Europe, North America]

Nerium indicum Miller; N. odorum Solander.

Several insect species are known to feed on Oleander, including a sphingid moth (Daphnis nerii), a lygaeid bug (Caenocoris nerii), and an aphid (Aphis nerii) (Herrera 1991).

Oleander (Nerium oleander) is an evergreen shrub that is widely cultivated as an ornamental in warm areas of the world. A variety of cultivars with sometimes fragrant deep-red, pink, cream, or white flowers are known, but the wild form always has pink flowers that are only mildly scented. (Herrera 1991 and references therein)

Oleander is known to be toxic to a range of mammals, including humans, and other animals (Shropshire et al. 1992; Aslani et al. 2004; Milewski and Khan 2006; Soto-Blanco et al. 2006; Barbosa et al. 2008; Kozikowski et al. 2009; see review by Langford and Boor 1996). However, human mortality associated with Oleander ingestion is generally very low, even in cases of intentional consumption (suicide attempts). Oleander foliage appears to be unpalatable to most animals, which reduces accidental ingestion. Bandara et al. (2010) reviewed medical aspects of human poisoning by Oleander and the related Yellow Oleander (Thevetia peruviana).

Oleander contains cardiac glycosides of the cardenolide type. The main cardiac glycoside of Oleander is oleandrin (C₃₂H₄₈O₉, molecular mass=576.3), but Oleander leaves and seeds contain more than 30 different cardiac glycosides. (Wasfi et al. 2008)

Oleander is apparently native to most countries around the Mediterranean and the larger Mediterranean islands, but not the Canaries. Populations are usually found below 1000 m in southern Spain, but North African populations may be found at 2000 m and above in the Atlas Mountains. (Herrera 1991 and references therein)

The Greek root of Nerium means "water", a reference to the site preference of this plant. Throughout its natural range, Oleander tends to occur at sites with a steady supply of soil moisture, such as along stream banks. The seeds of Oleander depend on a generous supply of water for optimal germination and young seedlings (those less than 1 year old) are extremely sensitive to drought. (Herrera 1991) However, established individuals are far more drought tolerant--in fact, this is one of the traits that makes Oleander so popular (Langford and Boor 1996).

A typical wild Oleander plant consists of a collection of stems up to 4 m high rising from a common stump with evergreen, coriaceous (leathery) leaves. A medium-sized plant (about 2 m in diameter and 2 m high) may produce from eight to more than 100 inflorescences. Each inflorescence is a corymb that, when large, may have 3 to 5 lateral branches and produce between 12 and 44 flowers. Individual flowers are showy (52 mm in diameter and brightly colored) and a blooming inflorescence may bear as many as 17 open flowers simultaneously.

Based on hand-pollination experiments, Oleander is fully self-compatible. However, spatial separation of anthers and stigmas necessitates the involvement of pollinators. In a study in southern Spain, Herrera (1991) observed remarkably little pollinator activity around Oleander. Fruit-set rates for open-pollinated flowers were far lower than for hand pollination. Although the flowers are very conspicuous, they do not appear to deliver a nectar or significant pollen reward to visiting insects. Herrera suggests that the attraction of large bees and other pollinators to the showy flowers of Oleander may be an example of evolved deception by historical Batesian mimicry. (Herrera 1991)

Chile Central

alcalóides

Cultivado.

Distribucion en Costa Rica: Se encuentra en todo el país bajo los 1600 m de altura.
Distribucion General: Originaria del Mediterráneo; introducida en todo el mundo como ornamental.

Arbusto.

Arbustos de 1 a 4 m. Hojas en verticilos, de 3 a 4, oblonlanceoladas o linear-lanceoladas, de 9,5 a 26 cm por 0,9 a 2,6 cm, agudas o corto-acuminadas, atenuadas en la base, glabradas. Pecíolo de 0,4 a 1,2 cm. Inflorescencia tirseiforme, terminal o axilar,. Flores dobles o triples. Lóbulos del cáliz ovados, de 5 a 7 mm. Corola infundibuliforme, blanca, crema, rosada o roja, con tubo de 0,9 a 1,5 cm. Garganta cónica, de aproximadamente 1 cm. Lóbulos obovados, de 1,9 a 2,7 cm. Frutos en folículos rectos, de 9 a 11,5 cm. Se reconoce por sus hojas en verticilos, el tamaño de sus flores y por crecer solo en forma cultivada.

Utilizada como ornamental en todo el país Sus hojas y la secreción lechosa que emana de su tronco son sumamente caústicas y venenosas. En algunos lugares se ha utilizado como "barbasco" para la pesca.

Localidad del tipo:
Depositario del tipo:
Recolector del tipo:

Nerium oleander Iv. Sp. PL 209. 1753
Shrub or small tree, as much as 5 m. tall, essentially glabrous; leaves opposite or in whorls of 3 or 4, very shortly petiolate, coriaceous, oblong-lanceolate, 2-30 cm. long, 0.5-3.5 cm. broad, acuminate, narrowly cuneate at the base, lustrous above; inflorescence subcorymbose, much surpassing the foliage, bearing few to numerous showy flowers of variable color, ranging from scarlet to yellowish-pink or white, and frequently double; calyx-lobes lanceolate to ovatelanceolate, acuminate, 4^6 mm. long, somewhat foliaceous; corolla infundibuliform, glabrous externally, the tube proper 8-12 mm. long, about 1.5 mm. in diameter at the base, the throat 1. N. V alenzuelana . conic-campanulate, 9-10 mm. long, about 7 mm. in diameter at the orifice, the lobes obliquely obovate to obovate-oblong, 20-25 mm. long, spreading; follicles relatively stout, 8-15 cm. long.
Type locality: Crele.
Distribution: Native of the Mediterranean region and the Orient; widely naturalized in tropical North America.

Nerium oleander L

Nerium oleander L., Sp. Pl. 1:209. 1753.—Pancher in Cuzent, Iles Soc. Tahiti 235. 1860.—Hillebrand, Fl. Haw. Is. 294. 1888.—Butteaud, Fl. Tahiti. 58. 1891.—Cheeseman, Trans. Linn. Soc. 6:287. 1903.—Setchell, Carn. Inst. Dep. Mar. Biol. Bull. 20:59. 1924.—Christophersen, Bish. Mus. Bull. 128:186. 1935.—St. John, Bish. Mus. Occ. Pap. 11(14):4. 1935.

Nerium indicum Miller, Gard. Dict. 8th ed. 1768.—Setchell, Univ. Cal. Pub. Bot. 12:202. 1926.—Wilder, Bish. Mus. Bull. 86:89. 1931; Bish. Mus. Bull. 120:40. 1934.

Nerium odorum (Solander) ex Aiton, Hort. Kew. 1:297. 1789.—F.B.H. Brown, Bish. Mus. Bull. 130:235. 1935.

Nerium haqueville Pancher in Cuzent, Iles Soc. Tahiti 235. 1860 [nomen nudum, apparently intended as a designation of a horticultural variety (name not in Kew Index)].

DESCRIPTION.—Shrub, puberulent. Leaves usually in threes, linear-oblong to oblanceolate, 10–15 × 1–2 cm, cuneate, acute. Cymes paniculate, terminal. Calyx lobes lanceolate, 6 mm long. Corolla usually filled, white or rose; lobes dextrorsely contorted, generally obovate, often irregular, 2.5–3 cm long. Follicles 2, not (or rarely) maturing.

Nerium indicum and N. oleander are commonly treated as separate species, and Schumann (in Engler and Prantl, 1895:180) distinguishes them as “B. lineal-lanzettlich, Bl. wohlreichend -N. odorum; B. lanzettlich, Bl. geruchlos -N. oleander,” but the most obvious of these characters does not show up at all in herbarium specimens. Linnaeus himself originally described N. oleander as “foliis lineari-lanceolatis,” indicating that even the shape of the leaf is subject to interpretation. Other distinctions have been made on the basis of the length of protrusion of the anther segments and the number of teeth on the segments of the crown.

Others have expressed doubt as to the separability of the species (cf., Merrill, 1935:315). In any case, the Polynesian material seems to be uniform in having odorous flowers, but has been variously interpreted. No taxonomist has yet reported both species from any one locality. Setchell reported N. indicum from Tahiti and N. oleander from Samoa, but preserved specimens in neither case. Cheeseman reported N. oleander from Rarotonga, while Wilder (1931) lists N. indicum from that island. Most earlier authors were not aware of Miller’s name, N. indicum, and called it N. odorum.

RANGE.—Society Islands (cultivated): Tahiti: Common, not collected. Raiatea: Moore 321, south of Uturoa, 17 November 1926, flower (red) (BISH, MIN); Moore 388, south of Uturoa, 1 December 1926, white flowers (BISH, MIN).

Native to southern Asia. The red-flowered form was introduced into Tahiti by the English missionaries and the other forms in 1848 and 1850, according to Pancher. Also cultivated in the Marquesas (!), Rarotonga (!), Samoa, Hawaii (!), and Midway Island. Naturalized in Rarotonga. Reported for the first time from the Tuamotus: Jones 841, Niau, 16 August 1922, sterile (BISH, 2 sheets).

LOCAL NAMES.—English: oleander. French: laurier rose and laurier blanc. Tahitian: tarona, and the white form tarona uouo. Samoan: oliana (Christophersen).

History of the Botanical Exploration of the Society Islands1

HOWARD M. SMITH

The Society Islands lie halfway around the world from Europe and were only discovered in 1767; but by the end of the eighteenth century their flora was relatively well known to European botanists. At first glance, this seems not at all surprising. The century was, after all, one which saw the great voyages of exploration in the Pacific, and the very hallmark of the age was the pursuit of science. Even though long sea voyages were numerous, scurvy and the inability to determine accurate positions at sea combined to make them both difficult and dangerous. Moreover, they were expensive, and usually only possible if subsidized by governments or large trading companies. Neither of these institutions was primarily concerned with promoting the sort of botanical studies necessary to produce a flora, for little return on their investment could be promised. On the other hand, they were most interested in spice-producing plants since trade in these was a very profitable business indeed. (The interest of France in spices in the eighteenth century is well documented by Ly-Tio-Fane [1958, 1970].) A by-product of this interest was the fact that areas of the world which were brought to the attention of Europe because of their commercial value were also areas whose natural history became increasingly well known. (For comments on the relationship of botany to British imperialism in the Far East, see Archer [1959] and Woodcock [1969].)

The Society Islands could not claim this advantage because they had few spices to speak of; certainly none in the quantity necessary to make a long sea voyage profitable. Therefore, the knowedge of their flora available in the eighteenth century, particularly in England, cannot be explained either by their commercial advantages or their accessibility. Other reasons must be sought, and for them it is first necessary to understand the circumstances under which the Societies were discovered and explored.

The year was 1763 and the Seven Years War had just been overwhelmingly won by the British. The Treaty of Paris left the balance of power in Europe undisturbed, and the young king of England, George III, pronounced it “a time of profound peace.” Finding that his nation had emerged from the war in undisputed command of the seas, His Majesty now felt himself free to devote his attention to what historians would later call The Founding of the Second British Empire (Harlow, 1952). In pursuance of this goal, the Admiralty brought it to his attention (Robertson, 1948:xxii) that

Land or Islands of Great extent, hitherto unvisited by any European power may be found in the Southern Hemisphere between Cape Horn and New Zeeland [sic], in Latitudes convenient for Navigation, and in climates adapted to the produce of commodities useful in Commerce….

The land supposed to lie in this area of the Pacific was the fabled Terra Australis Incognita, the legend of which probably began after the voyage of Marco Polo.2 Even though the report of the continent had never been verified, the tradition of its existence was still alive in the eighteenth century, particularly in contemporary geographical thought. For example, Charles de Brosses argued in 1756 that a land mass was necessary somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere in order to act as a counterweight for the land already known in the Northern Hemisphere; otherwise, the globe would be top-heavy and could not maintain an even keel (Dunmore, 1965, 1:45–50). The “Southern Continent” fulfilled this need for a balance very adequately. De Brosses found an enthusiastic English advocate in Alexander Dalrymple (1737.—1808) who made similar arguments in An Account of the Discoveries Made in the South Pacific Ocean, Previous to 1764 (Laughton, 1963–1964, V:402–403). Thus both men assured their respective countries that the “Southern Continent” had to be there; all that was necessary now was to send a ship to the South Seas and claim it.

The governments of England and France, however, were interested in the “Southern Continent” for reasons other than its capacity as a counterweight. It was reputed to be enormously rich in spices and gold, and, therefore, the addition of it to the colonial empire of either nation would upset the delicate balance of power resulting from the Treaty of Paris. The “Southern Continent,” it was reasoned, could make its possessor the greatest nation in Europe. It had first, however, to be found. Accordingly, an English expedition was fitted out, consisting of two ships: the Dolphin under command of Samuel Wallis and its consort, the Swallow, captained by Philip Carteret. The Admiralty advised Wallis that he was “to proceed with the Dolphin and the Swallow round Cape Horn or through the Strait of Magellan, as you find most convenient; and stretch to the westward about One Hundred or One Hundred and Twenty degrees of Longitude from Cape Horn, losing as little Southing as possible” (Robertson, 1948: xxiii). It was expected that the “Southern Continent” would be found long before one hundred degrees was passed, and Wallis was given detailed instructions on how he was to deal with its inhabitants and take possession of it for England.

The ships left Plymouth Harbour together on 21 August 1766, and the following January both were at the southern tip of South America. Wallis, to his cost, found it “most convenient” to enter the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan. The Dolphin and the Swallow, particularly the latter, had a great deal of trouble with storms and heavy seas in this treacherous channel, and when the Dolphin finally cleared the Straits, the Swallow was nowhere to be seen. Carteret was not able to get through until four days later, and the two ships were never in sight of each other again in the course of the voyage.

Prevailing winds prevented Wallis from keeping as far to the south as he had been instructed and instead drove him northwest. He turned due west only when he was in about twenty degrees of latitude, and a journey of some five months on this course enabled him to discover Mehitia, the easternmost of the Societies on 17 June 1767 (Appendix 1). He did not land there because he could find no anchorage for his ship.

At two o’clock, the same day, we bore away, and in about half an hour, discovered very high land in the W.S.W. At seven in the evening, Osnaburgh Island [Wallis’ name for Mehitia] bore E.N.E. and the new discovered land, from W.N.W. to W. by S… . [A]t day-break we saw the land, at about five leagues distance and steered directly for it … (Hawkesworth, 1773, I:433).

On 24 June 1767, the Dolphin lay at anchor in a superb harbor on this new island; Tahiti and all its allurements had been discovered.

In order to recoup his own ill health and that of his crew, Wallis remained in Tahiti until 20 July, a sojourn the delights of which are surely unparalleled in the history of Pacific navigation, but which did not advance the cause of botany overmuch. Very little exploration of the island of any kind was undertaken, much to the disgust of George Robertson (1948:231), Master of the Dolphin, who complained in his journal:

… Capt. Wallis, would not allow any of his Ships company to go to Examen any part of the Kings Island [Tahiti], but a small part of the Bay where the Ship Lay, Except the day that Mr. Gore went four or five mile up the River side, where he found cotton, Ginger, Indigo and many oyther things growing that we knowed nothing of before.

Gore was master’s mate of the Dolphin and the “River side” that he went up was that of the Vaipopoo, which then emptied into Matavai Bay where the ship was anchored. The “cotton” that he saw was probably Gossypium taitense Parkinson, and the “ginger,” Zingiber zerumbet (L.) Smith. When he reported “indigo,” he most likely saw the very similar Tephrosia purpurea Persoon since Indigofera, the true indigo, was of later introduction into the Societies.

After Wallis left Tahiti, he did not actually land on any other islands of the Society group although he sighted and named several (see Appendix 1). He was back in England again on 20 May 1768 and the “Southern Continent” was still not part of the British Empire.

It would be a mistake to assume that France, even though defeated in 1763, was sitting idly by while the British were exploring the Pacific. Most Frenchmen regarded the Seven Years War as a clear indication that England was outstripping France and they were by no means adverse to a little empire building of their own. In the winter of 1766, the Chevalier Louis-Antoine de Bougainville left Brest in the frigate La Boudeuse to be followed a month later by her storeship L’Etoile. One of the purposes of the voyage was a search for the “Southern Continent” for, like Wallis, Bougainville had been instructed to

examine in the Pacific Ocean as much of and in the best manner he can the land lying between the Indies and the western seaboard of America, various parts of which have been sighted by navigators… . Since knowledge of the islands or continents is very slight, it will be interesting to perfect it; furthermore, since no European nation has any settlement on, or claim over, these islands it can be to France’s advantage to survey them, and to take possession of them if they offer articles of value to her trade and her navigation.

In this sea, the area to which M. de Bougainville must pay particular attention is that between 40° of southern latitude towards the north, and what lies between the two tropics. It is in these latitudes that are found precious metals and spices. M. de Bougainville will study the land, the trees and the principal products; he will bring back samples and drawings of every-thing he considers merits attention … (Dun-more, 1965, I:67).

Here in capsule form are the interests of the French in the Pacific and no doubt because of the emphasis on natural products in the last paragraph of these instructions, the Duke of Praslin, who was Minister of the Marine at the time, decided that a naturalist should accompany this expedition. This was somewhat unusual, for most of the “scientific” personnel who took part in voyages of exploration in the eighteenth century were astronomers whose main function was determining the ship’s position at sea. (Vernon served in that capacity with Bougainville.) Since most of the ships’ surgeons knew a little natural history, it was only rarely that a professional naturalist accompanied such voyages.

Nevertheless, the Duke of Praslin wanted a naturalist and two of his advisors recommended Philibert Commerson to his attention. Commerson was a young botanist who had come to Paris at the urging of Bernard de Jussieu, and was appointed naturalist at the Jardin du Roi (now the Jardin des Plantes) in 1764. He had already amassed a large collection of plants from the provinces of central France and Switzerland, and at his death his herbarium was said to contain three thousand new species and genera (Lasègue, 1845: 56; Montessus, 1888–1890:200). Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu published a number of Commerson’s genera in his Genera Plantarum of 1789, but Commerson is probably best remembered to history for the romantic nonsense he wrote about the Tahitians in a letter to the French astronomer, Joseph Lalande, which was published in the Mercure de France (November 1769). In it he described Tahiti as a Utopia, an ideal republic whose happy inhabitants wandered about “sans vices, sans préjugés, sans besoins, sans dissensions”—all of this on the strength of an eight-day visit. The more-or-less constant native thievery was pictured as a sort of primitive socialism, and one can only conjecture what he would have made of it had he seen a human sacrifice or the practice of infanticide.

Unrealistic as this letter was, it added considerably to the growing cult of the “noble savage,” and Tahiti was thrust upon the European conscience in an unparalled way. The Rousseauists seized upon this description of a primitive society as proof of their contention that “civilization” was the source of much of the evil suffered by mankind,3 and Diderot, the editor of the Encyclopédie, used it as a basis for his plea for a more liberal relationship between the sexes in Europe. Without doubt Tahiti might have seemed like an earthly paradise in contrast to the artificiality of Versailles, but Commerson’s rosy perspective fell far short of an accurate description of pre-European Tahitian life. However, we may forgive him that. It was a sentimental age and Tahiti was bound to appeal to a sentimental nature. What is harder to forgive is that he never published a single scientific work during his lifetime and therefore there is no record of what the first trained European botanist saw as he wandered through his “Utopie.”

Bougainville anchored on the eastern side of Tahiti at Hitiaa on 6 April 1768, a little more than eight months after Wallis’ departure and remained there for about eight days. He went home by sailing north of New Guinea, on to Batavia, through the Indian Ocean to the French island of Mauritius (where he left Commerson) and entered the harbor of St. Malo on 16 March 1769; he had to report that the “Southern Continent” had also eluded him (see Appendix 2).

Still the idea persisted. After all, the geographers argued, the previous voyages had been in the vicinity of the Tropic of Capricorn. There was an enormous expanse of ocean to the south in the latitudes of New Zealand and surely there the continent was to be found. Let someone search below Capricorn and the geographers would be proved right. James Cook did just that—on two separate occasions—and he proved them wrong (Cook, 1955–1967).

Cook was first sent into the Pacific under the auspices of two institutions with very different motives: the Royal Society of London and the British government. In the spring of 1769 an event of great importance to astronomy was to occur. The planet Venus would cross the disc of the sun and proper observation of it would provide the foundation for the calculations of the distance of the earth from the sun. The transit had been observed in 1761, but only poorly, and it would not happen again until 1874. It was therefore necessary to insure the success of this observation and as early as June of 1766 the Royal Society began to prepare for it (Cook, 1955–1967, I, App. 2; see also Woolf, 1959). The “Committee for the Transit” decided to send observers to three parts of the world: Hudson’s Bay, the North Cape of Lapland, and to some suitable island in the South Seas. The Royal Society thought that the Hudson Bay Company would provide passage for the astronomers to North America and they might reach Lapland on the annual Navy ship which went there to protect Britain’s fishing interests. To send observers to the South Seas was another matter. The Royal Society itself had no money to equip and launch such an expedition and it turned to the government for the necessary financial support. The King was agreeable and granted the sum of four thousand pounds; the Admiralty provided a ship—the Whitby-built collier, now famous in Pacific history as the Endeavour.

The Council of the Royal Society proposed as observers of the transit Alexander Dalrymple, the geographer who argued so cogently for the existence of the “Southern Continent,” and Charles Green, an assistant to the Astronomer Royal at the Greenwich Observatory. Mr. Dalrymple made it abundantly clear, however, that he had not the slightest intention of making the voyage unless he had “the total management of the ship to be sent … .” The Admiralty, on its part, made it just as clear that, since Mr. Dalrymple was not a professional seaman, such an arrangement would be “totally repugnant to the rules of the navy …” (Cook, 1955–1967, 1:513). Thereupon James Cook was selected as the commander of the ship and also as one of the observers of the transit since he had had some practical experience as an astronomer during a marine survey on the northeastern coast of North America.

All these arrangements had taken place by mid-May of 1768 though the Royal Society had no very clear idea of just which island in the South Seas would be suitable as a site for astronomical observation. A few days later on 20 May, however, the Dolphin arrived in England and Wallis reported the discovery of an island which would serve the Society’s purpose quite nicely. The natives called it “Otaheite” and, fortunately, he had been able to determine its position rather accurately. Moreover, the natives showed no tendencies toward cannibalism, the climate was excellent, and food was available in trade for nothing more than iron nails and a few hatchets. Wallis also thought that he had actually seen the “Southern Continent” some “20 leagues to the South of George’s Island” (Cook, 1955–1957, I:cix), and Britain, still mindful of the economic and political advantages of an expanded empire, instructed Cook to pursue this report. After observing the transit from Tahiti, he was to sail south, down to forty degrees latitude; if he found no land, he was to turn west and search for it between thirty-five and forty degrees, all the way to the coast of New Zealand if necessary.

At this juncture, the Secretary of the Royal Society communicated one last request to the Admiralty (Banks, 1963; I:22):

Joseph Banks Esqr Fellow of this Society, a Gentleman of large fortune, who is well versed in natural history, being Desirous of undertaking the same voyage the Council very earnestly request their Lordships, that in regard to Mr. Bank’s great personal merit, and for the Advancement of useful knowledge, He also, together with his Suite, being seven persons more, that is eight persons in all, together with their baggage be received on board of the Ship, under the command of Captain Cook.

Included in Banks’ entourage, besides servants, artists, and a couple of dogs, was Daniel Solander (Rauschenberg, 1968), a young Swede and favorite pupil of Linnaeus who had been sent to England to promulgate the Linnean system of classification. Solander was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1764 and he probably met Banks shortly thereafter. Not only was he an agreeable man personally, but also one of the ablest botanists of his day; probably no better choice could have been made by Banks as a traveling companion in the Pacific. (For biographical information about Banks, see Banks, 1963, and Cameron, 1952.)

The extraordinary thing about this request of the Royal Society was that the Admiralty did not object to it in the slightest. Of Banks’ “great personal merit” at this time—he was only twenty-five—there is little enough evidence. But of his charm and abundant measure of the self-assurance of an eighteenth-century “gentleman of large fortune,” the very fact that no difficulties were raised is eloquent testimony. After all, this was a preposterous notion of Banks’. He proposed to inflict himself and his companions on an already over-crowded vessel for purposes not at all envisaged by either the government or the Royal Society and furthermore those purposes might uncharitably be construed as frivolous and totally removed from the serious nature of the enterprise (Banks, 1963, 1:23). However, to his lasting credit, he brought it off; so well in fact that Joseph Banks was to become the single most important man of the eighteenth century in promoting the development of knowledge of the Society Islands’ flora.

The Endeavour arrived at Tahiti on 13 April 1769 and remained there for three months. Venus was duly observed and Banks and his party collected about the island with complete freedom. While there, Cook learned of several other islands that were not far away and he decided to put this knowledge to some use. He badly needed more supplies than he could get at Tahiti and he felt his men would be the better for a rest before experiencing “the cold weather we might expect to meet with to the Southward at this Season of the year …” (Cook, 1955–1967, I:139).

Although the crew had been working very hard to prepare for the observation of Venus, they had also encountered Venus in the more substantial form of the native women. They delighted in the latter to such an extent that Cook confessed to his journal that the men “were in a worse state of hilth [sic] than they were on our first arrival, for by this time full half of them had got the Veneral Disease …” (Cook, 1955–1967, 1:138). And so he sailed westward when he left Matavai Bay and in the course of the next month leisurely visited the islands of Huahine, Raiatea, and Tahaa on all of which Banks and Solander collected plants (Banks also had collected on Moorea during this voyage; Banks, 1963, 1:283–285). He sailed along, but did not land on, the eastern coast of Borabora and sighted Tetiaroa, Maupiti and Tupai [Motuiti] (Appendix 1). In describing these islands in his journal, Cook (1955–1967, 1:151) said, “… as they lay contiguous to one a nother [sic] I have named [them] Society Isles.” Thus the Societies were not named for the Royal Society and at first included only these six islands mentioned above. Now the name embraces all of the islands and atolls from Mehetia in the east to Motu One in the west. It is in this modern sense that the name is used in this essay. In August 1769 the Endeavor turned due south and Cook began the second phase of his instructions.

When he arrived back in England, to general acclaim, on 13 July 1771, he had illuminated much of the Pacific area but had found no new continent, although its possible northern limits had been pushed back to a considerable extent. Cook was promoted to commander but enjoyed only a brief respite at home for there was a great deal of clamor for a second voyage. Both Cook and Banks wanted to return to the Pacific and those theorists who clung tenaciously to the last vestiges of the “Southern Continent” pointed to the Pacific below forty-five degrees latitude which hitherto had not been searched. Clearly, what was wanted was a passage in these higher latitudes all the way across the Pacific. In a postscript to his journal of the voyage of the Endeavour, Cook had briefly outlined a scheme for further Pacific exploration and, thus spurred, the Admiralty decided upon another voyage (Cook, 1955–1967, 1:478–479). Cook, of course, was given the command and it was understood that Mr. Banks would accompany him.

Banks was determined that this time natural history would not scramble aboard and make do. He had been lionized to such an extent ever since his return that this amiable young gentleman was suffering exceedingly from a swelled head. Two ships had been chosen for the second voyage—the Resolution and the Adventure—and when Banks saw the Resolution he decided emphatically that she would not do. He had accumulated a “Suite” this time of fifteen besides himself and had been spending money at a furious pace for all manner of equipment. The Resolution, he objected, was just not large enough for his purposes and would have to be refitted or else he would not go; this latter being his constant threat if his plans were thwarted in any way. Wishing to indulge such a wealthy youth, everyone tried hard to please him. Eventually, the ship, built for the coal trade with a wide, flat bottom and hold, was so altered that she became topheavy and threatened to capsize when any useful amount of sail was raised. At last, exasperated beyond endurance with Banks and his demands, the Admiralty and the Navy Board came down hard and ordered the Resolution restored to her original condition at once. This decision reduced Banks to swearing, stamping incoherence. John Elliot, a midshipman on the Resolution who later wrote his memoirs, recalled, “Mr. Banks came to Sheerness and when he saw the ship, and the alterations that were made, He swore and stamp’d upon the Warfe, like a Mad Man; and instantly order’d his servants, and all his things out of the Ship” (Cook, 1955–1967, II: xxx). Again he threatened that he would not go but this time the Admiralty took him at his word and his tantrum resulted in the appointment of John Reinhold Forster and his son George as naturalists of the expedition. This is one instance where Banks was not responsible for the appointment of the naturalists on an English voyage to the Pacific. Parliament had voted four thousand pounds for a “scientific man,” and it was Daines Barrington, a prominent lawyer and naturalist, who got the job for the Forsters (Cook, 1955–1967, II; Hoare, 1967,1971). It is indicative of the interest Cook’s first trip created in England that so large a sum was granted for a single person on the proposed second voyage. It will be recalled that it was an identical sum of money which the King had granted for the entirety of Cook’s first voyage.

Cook’s instructions were merely an expanded version of his own outline and once more the object of the voyage was the “Southern Continent.” The Royal Society had no particular interests in this voyage, but, together with the Board of Longitude, asked that four chronometers be tested for the purpose of determining longitude at sea. This was one of the great unsolved navigational problems of the day and Parliament had offered a prize of 20,000 pounds for its successful solution. One chronometer, based on John Harrison’s model (E. Forbes, 1966), was successful and it earned high praise from Cook before the journey’s end.

Cook and the Forsters were to call at the Society Islands on two different occasions on this voyage (Appendix 2). They entered the Pacific by way of the Cape of Good Hope, where the elder Forster engaged Anders Sparrman (Forster and Forster, 1776:iii) as an assistant naturalist, and continued on to New Zealand. On 26 August 1773 they were anchored in Matavai Bay, having spent some nine days on the eastern side of Tahiti-iti where the Resolution had been driven onto the reef. They spent six days in the familiar port and Cook then sailed to Huahine. Desirous of adding to his supplies, he visited Raiatea where the natives were so friendly that he was able to stock provisions beyond his expectations.

Then for eight months Cook searched the Pacific for the “Southern Continent” in a gigantic swing in the high latitudes, reaching between seventy and seventy-five degrees before turning north. Subsequently he visited Easter Island, continued north to the Marquesas and then turned south through the Tuamotus; he was back at Tahiti on 22 April 1774. Huahine and Raiatea were visited as usual and on 4 June he left for another sweep of the Pacific. On 29 July 1775 he was safely back in England and Dalrymple’s and de Brosses’ dreams were shattered forever; the ghost of the “Southern Continent” was well laid to rest.

With the completion of this voyage, Cook accepted an appointment at Greenwich Hospital for a well-deserved rest. It was not to be for long. At a dinner party given by First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Sandwich in early February 1776, Cook volunteered for yet another voyage, once more in search of an equally elusive bit of eighteenth-century geography—the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific.

Considerable energy had been expanded on this effort ever since John Cabot’s voyage in 1497 but to no avail. All previous attempts, however, had been made from east to west, i.e., they began the search in Hudson’s Bay. What was now proposed was a western approach to the problem, an approach which led via the South Pacific and up the coast of California to see if the presumed western outlet of the passage could be found. Not only would the discovery be of immense strategic value to the British government but the Royal Society espoused the voyage as one which “would contribute to the promotion of Science in general, and more particularly that of geography …” (Beaglehole, 1960:289). Cook was again to have two ships for the purpose, the familiar Resolution and another Whitby-built vessel, the Discovery.

Joseph Banks reentered the history of the Pacific with this voyage and under much more edifying circumstances than he departed from the last one. To be sure, he was not among the voyagers; he was, in fact, never to see the Pacific again. On the Discovery, however, was David Nelson, a Kew gardener whom Banks had engaged as a botanical collector (Dawson, 1958:256; Bladen, 1893:406), and natural history was competently represented on the Resolution by William Anderson, the surgeon’s mate of Cook’s last voyage.

This time Cook personally visited Moorea and Borabora, two islands which he had previously only seen from the ship (Appendix 2). Otherwise he made the customary circuit of Tahiti, Huahine, and Raiatea; he then sailed north to discover Hawaii and search the western coast of North America in vain for the outlet of the Northwest Passage. He returned a second time to Hawaii, where he was killed in a skirmish with the natives on 14 February 1779.

It is somewhat ironical that Cook, the greatest of the European explorers of the Pacific, was on each occasion asked to perform impossible tasks there. He could find neither the “Southern Continent” nor the Northwest Passage for the elementary reason that they did not exist as such. Of course, there is a “Northwest Passage” from the Atlantic to the Pacific around the polar region, but it is continuously blocked with ice. Therefore, in a sense, it did not exist for the eighteenth-century sailing ship because there would have been no possible way for such a vessel to penetrate the ice cap. However, this is not to say that Cook made no positive contributions in the Pacific but to emphasize his abilities to dispel illusions. Because of his superb qualities as an explorer, his legacy was a largely completed map of the Pacific, and men would no longer build dream empires on the “Southern Continent.” It would be for more narrowly conceived reasons that future expeditions would be dispatched to the Pacific; the great work had been done.

Such was the case for the first voyage of the Bounty under William Bligh, who had been Master of the Resolution on Cook’s third voyage (Mackaness, 1936). When Cook and Banks had visited Tahiti in 1769, they naturally observed and reported the usefulness of breadfruit in the native diet and great interest was taken in this staple in the British West Indies. Almost all of England’s sugar came from these islands and it was all produced by slave labor. Since food was often scarce there, particularly on St. Vincent and Jamaica, it was thought that the introduction of the breadfruit would provide a cheap source of food for the slaves and at the same time reduce the dependency of the islands on North America for foodstuffs.

One of the Jamaican plantation owners, Hinton East, who had formed the first botanical garden there in the 1740s (Fawcett, 1897:346), had long been a correspondent of Banks; and when in London in 1786, he personally impressed upon Banks the value of introducing the breadfruit into the West Indies (Mackaness, 1936:49). Banks was intensely interested in such schemes and he in turn proposed the idea to George III. Banks was very much in the confidence of his sovereign at this time so it is not surprising that the King thought well of the plan. Furthermore, Banks had maintained an active interest in the Pacific and became much involved in this voyage. Not only was Bligh appointed commander and David Nelson as botanist at his recommendation, but Banks himself drew up a careful list of instructions concerning the care of the breadfruit plants (Mackaness, 1936:51).

Bligh’s party sailed from Spithead on 28 November 1787 and spent five months at Tahiti. When he left there, he had over one thousand breadfruit seedlings on board, and the mutiny which prevented their ever reaching the West Indies is a well-known story. When the mutiny occurred, David Nelson cast his lot with his captain but unfortunately never reached England with him. He died at Timor and, of course, whatever botanical work he had done on Tahiti was totally lost.

Bligh did not get back to England until March of 1790 and in the meantime England and Spain were approaching a serious confrontation concerning the Pacific. Even in the waning years of the eighteenth century the Spanish Crown regarded the majority of the Pacific as part of her empire, and ever since Wallis, French and British voyages into that area of the world were viewed with increasing asperity. Spain was particularly interested in watching British activities in the Societies and in 1772 she sent a voyage to Tahiti from South America to investigate “whether any foreign colony has been planted there, as is suspected may have been done by the British nation” (Corney, 1913, 1:265). When this was found not to be the case, a second voyage was dispatched in 1774 to land two friars on Tahiti with an eye to establishing a permanent Spanish settlement there and thus preventing Britain from claiming Tahiti by right of discovery. The missionaries shortly became frightened of the natives and when a third ship reached the island in 1775 to bring them supplies, the friars refused to remain and returned to South America (Appendix 3).

But it was not colonization in this part of the Pacific that was the immediate cause of strained relations between Spain and England in the 1780s. After Cook’s last voyage many adventurous minds were attracted to the possibilities of the sea otter fur trade between the Pacific Northwest and China. John Meares, a former lieutenant in the British navy, had gone so far as to purchase land from the local Indians in Nookta Sound in 1788 and arranged exclusive rights to the fur trade with them. (Nootka Sound is an inlet of the Pacific situated on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.) When this became known to Spain later in the year, Captain José Marinez was sent from Mexico to investigate the amount of trade actually taking place around the Sound. So alarming was his report that he was commissioned to establish a permanent Spanish settlement in Nookta Sound in 1789. In doing so he insisted that all of the land there belonged to Spain, including that which Meares had bought from the Indians. The British would not tolerate this position and a full-blown war between Spain and England was only averted by the Spanish realization that, because of Britain’s powerful navy and the strength of her allies, war with England at that time would be a very risky business indeed (B. Anderson, 1960:29–43).

The entire affair was finally settled by diplomatic maneuverings and Britain won back Meares’ land in the settlement. It was decided to send a ship to Nookta Sound for the formal restitution of the land and George Vancouver was selected to command H.M.S. Discovery and her consort, the Chatham, for the purpose. In addition, he was to survey the coast of North America from thirty degrees latitude to Cook Inlet in Alaska just in case the outlet of the Northwest Passage had escaped Cook (B. Anderson, 1960:42–43). Vancouver was a logical choice for this assignment since he had been in the Pacific with Cook on his second and third voyages.

The fine hand of Banks is once again seen in this instance for with Vancouver was Archibald Menzies, a naval surgeon and trained botanist, who had collected for Banks along the northeast coast of North America in 1785. Banks had interceded with the King to get Menzies appointed to this voyage and it was from Banks himself that Menzies took his instructions—a most unusual circumstance for a member of the Royal Navy (Dawson, 1958:606).

When Vancouver and Menzies sailed in 1791, Banks had been a scientific advisor to the Royal Gardens at Kew for eighteen years and had carefully encouraged its development. He had the interests of the garden clearly in mind when he instructed Menzies (in Balfour, 1944–1945:81):

When you meet with curious or valuable plants which you do not think likely to be propagated from seeds in His Majesty’s Garden, you are to dig up proper specimens of them, plant them in the glass Frame provided for that purpose, and use your utmost endeavours to preserve them alive ’till your return… .

Menzies carried out his instructions very faithfully but many of the live plants intended for Kew did not survive due to the neglect of the servant delegated to care for them (Dawson, 1958:607).

The Discovery spent a month at Tahiti to restore the health of the crew and replenish the ship’s provisions. Then, late in January of 1792 she sailed northwest to begin the continental survey for which Vancouver is justly famous.

At the same time that Banks was busily involved with Menzies and his part in the Vancouver voyage, he had by no means abandoned his earlier protégé, William Bligh, and his plan for the transfer of breadfruit to the West Indies. As early as October 1790 Bligh was officially exonerated of any responsibility for the Bounty mutiny and Banks renewed his appeals to the Admiralty for another breadfruit voyage to Tahiti. The Admiralty was persuaded in March of 1791 and Bligh was instructed to look for a suitable ship (Lee, 1920:vii et passim). He found one in a new West Indiaman, the Providence, and the small brig Assistant was chosen to accompany her; apparently Bligh was taking no chances of another mutiny and the necessity of getting back to England in the launch.

Banks, as usual, chose the botanists (Dawson, 1958:869–870). James Wiles and Christopher Smith were to sail on the Providence, and once more the interests of Kew were urged by Banks (in Britten, 1922:23):

Whenever you shall meet with plants in your opinion particularly beautifull [sic] or curious, you are to … take on board one or two of each sort for the use of his Majesty’s Botanic Garden at Kew… .

In addition, Banks requested them to make a complete set of all the specimens they collected for his personal herbarium, for which they would receive extra pay from him (Dawson, 1958:870).

The two ships sailed on 3 August 1791 and arrived at Tahiti in early April of 1792. Bligh spent only about two months there but collected more breadfruit seedlings than in his previous stay of five months and this time they successfully arrived at the West Indies.

Capped by this note of achievement the eighteenth century closed without any other major botanical collections from the Society Islands. They had been stumbled upon thirty-three years earlier in the search for a commercial empire hopefully to be founded on spices, and if they had had these in commercially exploitable quantities, their history would quite probably have been vastly different. Apart from a little ginger, however, they had none, so the European governments lost interest in their flora as such. Nevertheless, an amazing amount of botanical collecting had been done and it was due to several fortunate circumstances. Not the least of these was the fact that Sir Joseph Banks was a powerful man in eighteenth-century science, and that he was deeply interested in Pacific botany. Elected President of the Royal Society of London in 1778, he remained in that office for over forty years. During that long tenure he achieved international influence as a promoter of all the sciences.

Indeed, it would be difficult to underestimate Banks’ role in bringing Society Islands plants to the attention of Europe. English ships were going to that part of the world for every purpose except botany, and yet he somehow managed to get botanists on board. Not only was his among the first collections of the Societies’ flora, he also developed the finest natural history library of the region to be found in Europe. Most of the people interested in the plants of the “South Sea Islands” sooner or later were welcomed at Banks’ London house at 32 Soho Square, and all of its botanical treasures put at their disposal. His herbarium had specimens from all over the Pacific and Kew Garden was enriched with several introductions from the Societies obtained at Banks’ instigation.

In addition, events had so transpired that England had a number of reasons, both political and commercial, for being in the Pacific in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the only routes were by way of the Cape of Good Hope or around the Horn. In either case, the Societies, ideally situated in the middle of the South Pacific, were a natural refuge and refitting station. They had good harbors, food was usually easily obtained at one or another of the islands of the group, and the natives—if not conforming to the letter of the Social Contract—at least seemed to hold no serious prejudices against Europeans.

Lastly, it must always be kept in mind that the only way of reaching the Societies in the eighteenth century was by sea and on that element Britain was supreme. These facts, in connection with Banks’ interest and influence, worked together to make this inconspicuous scattering of volcanic and coral outcroppings much visited and much explored by the English.

In the face of all this activity, it is strange that so very little was published about the Societies in the eighteenth century or even the early nineteenth century. Banks’ librarian, Jonas Dryander, cataloged his library and published a five-volume account of it from 1796 to 1800. In the volume dealing with botany (1797) under the heading Insularum Oceani Pacifici there are only six books and articles listed. These are William Anderson’s manuscript, “Descriptiones Plantarum” (1776.—1777), Sydney Parkinson’s Journal (1773), and an article attributed to Parkinson in Die Naturforscher (Z., 1774). George Forster is represented by three short entries: De Planus Esculentis (1786a), the Prodromus (1786b), and a paper entitled “Decas Plantarum Novarum ex Insulis Maris Australis” (1780). Strangely enough, the Characteres Generum Plantarum of J. R. and G. Forster (1776) is not listed.

Philibert Commerson apparently never felt himself to be intellectually prepared enough to commit anything to paper, for in a letter written to one of his friends in 1757 (in Oliver, 1909:37), he observed:

As for your reproach that I am communicating nothing to the public, it is easy to give a satisfactory reply. How could I expect the public to be pleased with me when I have not even satisfied myself?

Whether this was conviction or merely conceit we cannot judge but it remains that Commerson never published the results of any of his botanical studies and his collections from Tahiti have apparently been lost. Indeed, some have doubted that Commerson did any botanical collecting on Tahiti (e.g., Grant, unpublished notes). This would be very surprising if it were true and there is at least indirect evidence that it is not. Bougainville (1772: 304) made the direct statement in his journal that “M. de Commercon [sic] went on shore to botanize there [Tahiti] …” and there is a manuscript notebook in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, annotated in Commerson’s hand, containing observations made at Patagonia, Tahiti, and the New Hebrides. The notebook is dated from 7 September to 25 October 1768 and thus brackets the Bougainville expedition’s stay on Tahiti (see Taillemite, 1968:35–58). In a paragraph entitled, “Fertilité de l’isle [Tahiti] et ses productions,” he noted at least the important economic plants such as coconuts, bananas, yams, sweet potatoes (patates) and sugar cane (Taillemite, 1968:45).

Commerson later alluded to the flora of Tahiti in a manner which leads one to believe that he had a first-hand knowledge of it. In a letter to Lalande, Commerson argued against the generalization that similar plants grow in similar latitudes and in the course of the argument emphatically stated, “Tahiti has its own characteristic botany …” (Cap, 1861:118). All of this indicates that Commerson had at least studied, and probably collected, Tahitian plants.

Nevertheless, after his death in 1773, an inventory of his effects included plants from the Mascarenes, Madagascar, the Seychelles, Brazil, the Straits of Magellan, Buenos Aires, Batavia, the island of Buru (or Boero), Paraguay, New Ireland, and Montevideo (Oliver, 1909:221). His will of 1766 made the Jardin du Roi the heir of all his botanical material, and in 1776 they were put into the hands of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu for study (Bidal, 1934:214; Stafleu, in Jussieu, 1964). Jussieu did not find any Tahitian material among the collection (Montessus, 1889.—1890:200), nor is there mention of it in the published records of herbaria to which Commerson is known to have sent duplicates. Some of Commerson’s plants, probably duplicates, were sent to Louis-Guillaume Lemonnier who held the Chair of Botany at the Jardin du Roi from 1758 to 1785. Lemonnier’s herbarium was purchased by Benjamin Delessert and a description of the Delessert collections contains no Commerson material from Tahiti. “The plants coming from several voyages of Commerson and which were entered in the herbarium of M. Lemonnier, were more than 3000. Several cases of plants, among others those collected at Tahiti, were unfortunately lost during the voyage” (Lasègue, 1845:56). Equally unfortunately, Lasègue is not at all clear about the exact voyage (traversée) on which they were lost. Cap (1861:33–34) lists the herbaria to which Commerson is supposed to have sent duplicates.

Aside from a trip to Madagascar, Commerson never left the Mascarenes and he died on Mauritius (Ly - Tio - Fane, 1958). Therefore, if his Tahitian plants survived the Bougainville voyage, they must have been either lost in the Mascarenes or in the transport from Mauritius to the Jardin du Roi.

Accompanying Commerson on his voyage with Bougainville was a young artist, Jossigny. He made a large number of drawings from living specimens and these were also willed to the Jardin du Roi by Commerson. Some five portfolios of drawings arrived there in 1774, three of botany and two of zoology, all bearing the signature of either Commerson or Jossigny (Lalande, 1775: 113, n. 1; Cap, 1861:23–24, 39). Perhaps among these is to be found the only extant record of plants observed by Commerson at Tahiti.

Banks, also, did not publish the results of his botanical discoveries in the Societies. That he had every intention of doing so, and in the grand manner, is evident from the fact that the manuscripts of the floras of Madeira, Brazil, Tierra del Fuego, New Zealand, Java, and the Society Islands were prepared by Solander (1782), which Stearn discussed in two excellent articles (1968, 1969). Sydney Parkinson, one of the artists Banks had engaged for the voyage, had made 995 drawings of natural history objects, and Banks planned to have copper engravings of these made to be included with the text (Britten, 1905:282). Solander was to do the technical descriptions of all the collections resulting from the voyage, and Banks took it upon himself to superintend the engraving of the plates. The latter was a time-consuming task as evidenced by Banks’ letter to the younger Linnaeus in 1778 (Smith, 1821, II:575):

Uninterruptedly, however, as I have applied to the work of engraving for near five years, I have not yet advanced above half of my intended progress. About 550 plates are engraved, and I think, if circumstances as yet unexpected do not oblige me to cut it short, it will extend to double that number.

The work was so near completion that he was able to write in November 1784 (Rauschenberg, 1964:67):

The botanical work with which I am presently involved is nearing its conclusion… . Since all the descriptions were made when the plants were fresh, nothing remains to be done, except to fully work out the drawings still not finished, and to record the synonyms from books which we did not have with us or which have come out since. All that is left is so little that it can be completed in two months, if only the engravers can come to put the finishing touches on it.

Unfortunately, these “finishing touches” were never completed. After 1778, when he was elected president of the Royal Society, Banks became increasingly occupied with its affairs and with the Royal Gardens at Kew. In addition, he had lost his co-worker, Solander, who had died in 1782. Sir James Edward Smith (1821, 11:579) gave it as his opinion that the reason the volumes were never published was because they were “sacrificed to the duties incumbent, for almost half a century, on the active and truly efficient President of the Royal Society.”

Many of Banks’ and Solander’s observations on plants appear in the journal which Banks kept on the voyage of the Endeavour and also in Hawkesworth’s (1773) account of it. After Banks died in 1820, all of his collections were willed to the British Museum and in the nineteenth century, Berthold Seemann (1865–1873) published parts of Solander’s manuscript of the Societies in his Flora Vitiensis. Later still, the plates and descriptions of Banks and Solander’s (1900) Australian plants were published by the British Museum. However, the majority of what would surely have been one of the most impressive works in natural history of the eighteenth century still lies unpublished in the British Museum of Natural History.

The only description of the voyage that was published by a member of it was Sydney Parkinson’s (1773) journal. It was posthumously published by his brother, Stanfield Parkinson and an extract was published in German in 1774 by “Z.” This is an important work in the history of the botany of the Society Islands because it contains a number of binomial names of useful plants found on Tahiti (Merrill, 1954b:326–363). It is highly doubtful that Parkinson originated any of these names; instead, when a new plant was found and Parkinson sketched it, he probably wrote the name Solander gave him on his drawing for future identification. Therefore, it would only be natural for him to refer to these plants by the Solander names in his journal. This account of the Society Islands is the first to include proper scientific names for the plants found there. However, there is a question whether or not the names are validly published under the present rules of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and acceptable to modern taxonomy. F. R. Fosberg (1941:93–96, 1960:101–113, pers. comm.) has accepted at least four of Parkinson’s specific epithets as valid, since they are accompanied by enough descriptive information so that there should be no question about their identity. These are Sitodium altilis (= Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson) Fosberg), Aniotum fagifera (= Inocarpus fagiferus (Parkinson) Fosberg), Spondias dulcis and Pandanus tectorius. The Forster names of the genera Sitodium and Aniotum are Artocarpus and Inocarpus, respectively. These have been conserved over the prior Parkinson names (Fosberg, 1939:231). Most of the names, however, are to be regarded as nomina nuda and thus are not validly published.

The Forsters foreswore colored plates and other pretensions to Banksian magnificence and got down to the business of publishing their results as soon as they returned to England. Both G. Forster (1777) and J. R. Forster (1778) wrote narratives of their voyage, as did Anders Sparrman (1789). Although all three mention the vegetation of the Society Islands, none of them are technical botanical treatises. The first scientific work that appeared from Cook’s second voyage was a collaboration between the elder and younger Forster (1776). It was entitled, Characteres Generum Plantarum and was first published in a folio edition of only six copies in 1775. In March of the following year, a much larger edition, in quarto, came out, apparently with no textual changes from the first edition (St. John, 1971). Four years later, George Forster (1780) delivered a paper to the Royal Society of Science at Upsala entitled “Decas Plantarum Novarum ex Insulis Maris Australis,” which mentioned ten genera of plants all taken from the Characteres. Only one genus, Mallococca, is recorded from the Societies (Huahine).

The 1776 publication contained a description of 75 new genera, classified according to the Linnean system, and for each genus there was a small plate showing the characteristics of typical fruits and flowers. However, the work is somewhat unsatisfactory because there are no collecting localities indicated for the genera, and the plates are extremely small in relation to the size of the page (Holmes, 1952:31).

Exactly why the elder Forster’s name appears first on the title page, and Sparmann’s not at all, is a mystery. In the preface, J. R. Foster (Foster and Forster, 1776:iii) described the allocation of duties of the three naturalists as follows:

Sparrman was to describe the plants [and name them?] my son was to draw them… . However while Sparmann was examining the plants in detail my son and I often were consulted [by Sparrman] and we had common discussions. Then my son arranged the plants he [Sparrman] had described in another volume. I revised them all before the descriptions were again transcribed into yet another volume in accordance with the Linnean System… .

In spite of the confusing syntax and surfeit of volumes, it seems clear that Sparrman and George Forster did the majority of the work, and it is somewhat disingenuous of J. R. Forster to assume credit as the senior author.

In 1786[a], George Forster alone produced De Planus Esculentis Insularum Oceani Australis. There were two editions of this book; one was his dissertation for the M.D. degree and published at Halle, and the other was a reprint done in Berlin a few months later (see Merrill, 1954a:35–40). Fifty-four species of plants are listed under the headings of their edible parts such as fruit, root, etc., twenty-six of which were in use in the Society Islands (G. Forster, 1786a: 19). In the index to the work, the proper Linnean class follows the name of the plant and each is very adequately described in the text.

Not such a laudable production, perhaps, is George Forster’s Florulae Insularum Australium Prodromus, also published in 1786[b]. It is indeed a “preliminary” flora because it appears very unfinished. The descriptions of each plant are so short that they are almost worthless except when augmented by the De Planus Esculentis. There are 119 species of flowering plants listed from the Society Islands and Forster in this case did indicate where they were collected. However, he followed Cook’s definition of the Societies in that he considered “Tahiti” as being separate from the “Society Islands” (Britten, 1916:251). Therefore, if a specimen was not collected on Tahiti, it is simply labeled “Society Islands,” with no further indication of precisely where it was found.

Cook’s third voyage produced no botanical publications whatever. David Nelson, appointed by Banks to collect plants for him, apparently did a commendable job, for Banks (in Britten, 1916: 251) later wrote as a recommendation of him that he had “sailed with Captain Cook on his third voyage round the world in my service for the purpose of collecting plants and seeds, and was eminently successful in the object of his mission… .”

Nelson sent his collections to Banks when he landed in England in 1781 and Solander, who was still working on the floras from the Endeavour voyage, cited a number of Nelson’s specimens. No doubt because Nelson was a hired collector and because his collection was incorporated into a flora already in progress, he did no publishing on his own.

William Anderson was under no such obligation to Banks, but, since he died at sea on 3 July 1778, it is impossible to say if he would have published any of his notes. He recorded his observations of the plants he collected in two manuscripts: “Descriptiones seu characteres specificos plantarum in itinere nostro visa annis 1776–77,” which is only 6 pages long, and the “Genera nova plantarum seu descriptiones characterum naturalium plantarum adhuc incognitarum in itinere nostro visa 1776–77 in unguis Latinis et Anglices scriptes,” of 32 pages. The former of these came into the possession of Banks and is mentioned in the catalog of his library (Dryander, 1796–1800, III:184); both of them are now in the British Museum of Natural History. Although subsequent botanists, including Robert Brown and J. D. Hooker made use of them, the manuscripts themselves were never published (Britten, 1916:348–351).

Archibald Menzies (Boulger, 1963–1964) collected plants on Tahiti and kept a detailed journal of his long voyage with Vancouver, but the only part of it that he published was an account of his mountain-climbing experiences in Hawaii (Menzies, 1829, 1:201–208, 11:435–442). In 1920 another portion dealing with Hawaii was edited and published under the title of Hawaii Nei 128 Years Ago (Menzies, 1920), but no other section dealing with the Pacific Islands has been issued. There are copies of the complete journal, which runs to five volumes, in the British Museum and at the Linnean Society of London (Balfour, 1944–1945).

Some of his new species of plants were described and published by Sir James Edward Smith (1821) and Robert Brown (1810) but by far the majority of them by W. J. Hooker in his Botanical Miscellany (1830) and the Flora Boreali-Americana (1829–1840).

Menzies’ own particular interests were in cryptogams and when he died, he bequeathed his large herbarium of them to the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. Naturally Banks had received many specimens, and some of Menzies’ plants from the Pacific Islands are reported to be in the Martius collection at Munich. Other Menzies specimens are also at Brussels and the British Museum (Balfour, 1943–1944:181).

Due to the very nature of the breadfruit voyages, it is not surprising that no publications resulted from them. They were strictly commercial ventures and the botanists who sailed on them were hired primarily to care for the breadfruit seedlings. Little time was available for anything else and even before the ships sailed from England Banks had arranged to buy the collections for himself.

Since there were facilities for maintaining live plants on board, Bligh was able to bring back some “curiosities” on the Providence. In a table summarizing the results of the voyage, he included “An Account for his Majesty’s Garden at Kew.” There were 24 vessels containing 32 plants from Tahiti and among these were “Breadfruit, Rattah or Chestnut, Ayyah or Jambo, Avee or Apple, Peeah Sago Flour, Oraiah Plantain, Cocoanut, Nono singular and Hoohee or Yams” (Lee, 1920:222).4

When the Providence arrived at Jamaica, Wiles was engaged to remain there as a gardener at Bath and his collections are in the Delessert Herbarium at Geneva, at Kew, and in the Banks’ collection at the British Museum. Smith’s dried specimens from Tahiti are also in the British Museum (British Museum, 1904:83). Aiton and Aiton (1810–1813) list some of the plants introduced into Kew from this voyage.

Thus the eighteenth century provided only a meager list of books about the plants to be found in the Society Islands. Even in the nineteenth century, which saw a tremendous increase in the amount of collecting and number of publications concerning their botany (see below), there was still no flora of the islands written. Several lists of species with varying amounts of description and comment were available, mostly done by French naval officers interested in botany or by Frenchmen living on Tahiti. None of these, however, were critical taxonomic works. The closest thing to a flora of the Societies was Emmanuel Drake del Castillo’s Flore de la Polynésie Française of 1892, which includes the Marquesas, Tuamotus, and the Gambier and Wallis groups (Jouan, 1896, has critically reviewed this flora). When Drake del Castillo prepared it, he had not seen many of the plants in the British or American collections, nor had he ever seen any of the plants in the field. It is now, of course, much out of date. And so, this flora prepared by Dr. Martin Grant in 1936, partial though it is, must be considered as much more than just an addition to the field of Society Islands’ botany; it constitutes a real beginning.

A CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF THE MAJOR VOYAGES, COLLECTIONS, AND PUBLICATIONS CONCERNING THE FLORA OF THE SOCIETY ISLANDS IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES5

1817–1856. J. M. Orsmond, missionary, left a record of the native names and uses of a large number of plants which was published by Henry (1928).

1822–1825. Lesson, with Duperrey in the Coquille, collected a few plants. [The phanerogams of this voyage were reported by Brongniart (1829) and the cryptogams by Bory de Saint Vincent (1827–1829). Lesson (1838) included chapters on the plants of Tahiti and Borabora in his narrative of the voyage. Duperrey (1825–1830) wrote the general account of the voyage.]

1826. Captain Beechey in the Blossom. A fair-sized plant collection was made by Lay and Collie, and a report published by Hooker and Arnott (1832–1840).

1827–1828. [Hugh Cuming made a small collection in Tahiti which is discussed by St. John (1940). These plants are now at Kew.]

1830. [Captain Waldgrave (1833) discussed some plants of the Society Islands before the Royal Geographical Society.]

1831–1834. Bertero and Morenhout made an extensive plant collection which was written up by Guillemin (1836–1837).

1834. Nightingale collected a few plants, largely in Huahine, [and a list of the ferns by W. J. Hooker was included as a botanical index in Nightingale (1835).]

1835 Captain Fitzroy and Charles Darwin in the Beagle. Darwin made a few observations on plants in the Society Islands in his journal (1852).

1836 Endlicher (1836) published a list of all the plants known from Polynesia, Micronesia and New Zealand.

1836–1839. Du Petit-Thoiiars in the Venus. A very few of his plants were reported on by Decaisne (1849, 1864).

1836–1842. Captain Belcher in the Sulphur. Hinds and Barclay collected a few plants. [Hinds published a superficial description of the vegetation in Belcher’s (1843) narrative of the voyage].

1837–1840. Dumont d’Urville in the Astrolabe and the Zélée. Collections were made by Hombron, Jacquinot, and Le Guillou. [Hombron and Jacquinot (1845–1853) edited the botanical volumes of the voyage and Dumont d’Urville (1841–1846) wrote the narrative.]

1839. The United States Exploring Expedition under Captain Wilkes. [Wilkes (1844) wrote the general account of the voyage.] Plants were collected by Pickering, Rich, and Brackenridge. [Several reports on the flowering plants were issued by Asa Gray (1854–1856) and Brackenridge (1854–1855) wrote up the ferns.]

1843. [Virey discussed the economic flora of the Societies.]

1845–1847. Galathea expedition, with Didricksen collecting a few plants.

1845–1847. Dr. Johnston wrote a short paper on the botany of Tahiti. [This paper was found among the papers of William Swainson and the author is unknown. Rehder (1911, 1:510) credits it to Nadeaud and Merrill (1947) agrees that it is probably a translation of Nadeaud (1874).]

1847. Vesco, the surgeon of the Uranie sent a number of plants to Paris. [This was the frigate Uranie under Captain A. J. Bruat.]

1848. [E. Delessert (1848) wrote a narrative of his travels in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and included notes on the vegetation of the Society Islands.]

ca. 1850. Bidwill, Sibbald, and Ribourt collected a few plants.

1851–1853. Andersson and Ponten, botanists on the Eugenie, made a small collection. [This was a Swedish expedition and the narrative of it was written in Swedish by Skogman in 1855. His account mentions some plants from the Societies. For the German translation, see Skogman (1856).]

1852–1857. Jardin (1862) collected a considerable number of plants in the Marquesas, and secured a few plants in Tahiti. [He also published (1860) a supplement to Guillemin 1836–1837).]

1855. Pancher and Vieillard made a small collection and Pancher published a short paper on the flora [in Cuzent (1860).]

1856–1859. Nadeaud made very extensive plant collections and published an account of the useful plants (1864), a check-list of the flora (1873), an essay on the botany of Tahiti (1874) and a number of taxonomic notes (1897, 1899).

1856–1863. Cuzent, residing in Tahiti, wrote two important papers on the medical and useful plants (1857, 1860) and a number of shorter ones (1861a, 1861b).

1857. Lépine, a pharmacist stationed in Tahiti collected a number of plants and published at least one paper (1857).

1857–1859. Commodore Wiillerstorf-Urbair in the Novara. Jelinek made a small collection, now in the Vienna herbarium. [The botanical part of the voyage was edited and published by Fenzl (1867–70).]

1865–1873. Seemann’s Flora Vitiensis (1865–1873) contains a record of all the Society Islands’ plants then in the British Museum.

1865–1884. Jouan published several papers on the useful plants (1865, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1882, 1884).

ca. 1870. Whitmee made a small collection. [This was the Rev. S. J. Whitmee who also collected in Samoa.]

1875. Captain Spry in the Challenger. Moseley (1879) made a small collection of plants. [Baker (1876) wrote a description of the ferns.]

1878. Vernier and Savatier, botanists with the Magicienne, brought a number of plants back to Paris. [Savatier’s herbarium is now at Kew; see Stapf (1909). A brief account of the voyage was published by Savatier (1880).]

1886. Lanessan’s (1886) paper on the useful plants is merely a compilation based on Nadeaud (1864) and Cuzent (1857).

1886–1898. Emmanuel Drake del Castillo wrote the first flora which included the Society Islands (1892), a check-list of all Polynesian plants (1886–1892) and a number of short papers (1887, 1888, 1890, 1898).

1891. Butteaud’s (1891) Flore tahitienne is an inaccurately compiled check-list of the native flora with original notes on the introductions.

1905–1906. Seurat published several papers on the useful plants (1905, 1906a, 1906b). 1909–1912. Leland, Chase, and Tilden made a small collection (see page 1).

1910. Christian (1910) published a few notes, largely on the useful plants.

1918. [Bonaparte (1918) published a list of Tahitian ferns with notes.]

1921. F. Brown secured a small number of specimens (see page 1). [In their Flora of Southeastern Polynesia, F. Brown (1931, 1935) and Brown and Brown (1931) discuss a number of Society Islands plants although the flora is mainly concerned with all of Southeastern Polynesia but the Societies].

1921–1923. Whitney expedition. Quayle and Curtiss made a large collection. (See page 1).

1922. Setchell and Parks made a large collection, and a report on the flowering plants was published by Setchell (1926). [Maxon (1924) reported on the ferns, and Viguier (1930) wrote some general notes on the vegetation compiled from Setchell.]

1926–1927. Moore made an exhaustive collection in Raiatea, the nearest thing to a complete herbarium that I have ever seen from Polynesia. A description of his novelties has been published (1933, 1934).

1926–1932. [Wilder collected in the Societies, and published a paper on the breadfruit of Tahiti (1928).]

1927. [Macdaniels made a large collection from Tahiti. (See page 1). From the collection, Moore (1940) described 14 new species.]

1929–1930. [Adamson collected several plants in Tahiti. (See page 1).]

1930–1931. [Grant’s collection on which this flora is based.]

1932. [Copeland published a report on the ferns from Grant’s collection.]

1932–1933. [Martelli wrote two papers (1932, 1933) on the Pandanaceae.]

1934. [The Mangarevan expedition with St. John and Fosberg. Several papers have been published on the plants collected by them. See Copeland (1938), Fosberg (1937), Heimerl (1937), Sherff (1937), and Sussenguth (1936).]

1961. [A very small collection was made in Moorea by Elizabeth Murray and is now in the Bishop Museum.]

1963. [M.-H. Sachet collected in Tahiti and sets will be deposited in the Bishop Museum and in the U.S. National Herbarium.]

1963. [J.–N. Maclet began collecting in Tahiti and has continued. Many of his specimens are at the U.S. National Herbarium.]

1967. [Howard Smith collected 186 numbers in Moorea. A complete set of the flowering plants is in the Bishop Museum and the ferns are in the University of Michigan Herbarium.]

Nerium oleander L

Nerium oleander L., Sp. Pl., 209, 1753.—Jouan, Mém. Soc. Sci. Nat. Cherbourg, 11:114, 1865.

Large bushy shrubs; leaves in whorls of 3 or 4, well separated on sparsely branched stems; flowers showy, in cymes, corolla with toothed or somewhat lacerate appendages in throat; follicles terete, drooping, 20 or more cm long; seeds with a tuft of hairs.

Native from the Mediterranean region to the Indus Valley, a component of broad-sclerophyll vegetation; cultivated in most warm countries. Two common cultivated varieties, apparently indistinguishable when sterile, proliferated into series of horticultural selections of cultivars, differing in color and number of corolla segments. Jouan saw several magnificent plants in Nukuhiva (Taiohae) around 1856. It is called rorie, a borrowing from the French laurier rose.

Nerium oleander L. var. oleander

Flowers essentially odorless, the corolla salver-form, with short tube and lacerate scales in throat, white to pink or rarely red.

SPECIMENS SEEN.—Hivaoa I.: Puamau, house yard, 100–200 ft [30–70 m], Decker 571 (US) (white).

Die selonsroos of Nerium oleander is ’n immergroen struik of klein boom in die familie Apocynaceae. Dit is tans die enigste spesie in die genus Nerium. Dit word so algemeen gekweek dat die presiese oorsprong nog nie vasgestel is nie, hoewel Suidwes-Asië al voorgestel is.

Die plant is van die Atlasgebergte in Noord-Afrika af na Suid-Afrika ingevoer en het hier genaturaliseer geraak. Hulle groei wild langs party van die Wes-Kaap se riviere. Die oleander is een van die heel giftigste tuinplante.

Nerium oleander «Adelfa» redirixe equí. Pa otres aceiciones, ver Adelfa (dixebra). Flor de la variedá blanca. Les flores allugar n'inflorescencies cimosas corimbiformes terminales. Detalle de la corona y de los órganos reproductores.

La adelfa (Nerium oleander), tamién conocida (ente otros nomes) como lloréu de flor, rosa lloréu, baladre o trinitaria, ye la única especie aceptada perteneciente al xéneru Nerium, de la familia Apocynaceae.

Adi oleandr (lat. Nerium oleander) — kəndirkimilər fəsiləsinin oleandr cinsinə aid bitki növü.

El baladre (Nerium oleander L.), és un arbust perenne que pot arribar a petit arbre. Pertany a la família de les apocinàcies, la qual és molt nombrosa, amb més de 180 gèneres i 1.300 espècies. El baladre és una de les plantes de jardí més verinoses de les habitualment conreades. És l'única espècie actualment classificada dins el gènere Nerium També rep el nom de diva, llorer rosa, roser reial o veratre.

Oleandr obecný (Nerium oleander) je dekorativní keř až strom a jediný zástupce rodu oleandr (Nerium). Je charakteristický poměrně úzkými zelenými listy a různobarevnými květy (nejčastěji se jedná o růžovou, žlutou a bílou variantu).

Blomsterknop af oleander

Nerie (Nerium oleander) er en stedsegrøn busk med halvkugleformet, åben vækst. Alle dele af planten er meget giftige. Den kaldes også Oleander.

Ang adelpa (Ingles: oleander o rosebay) o Nerium oleander (pangalang pang-agham) ay isang espesye ng palumpong na namumulaklak.

ilili (assaɣ usnan: Nerium oleander) d talmest n yemɣan yeṭṭafaren tawsit n ilili deg twacult n tliliyin, Dɣa ilili d imɣ id yettemɣayen deg yedgan dgi llan waman am irawen n wasif

Ilili - Nerium oleander

Kembang mentèga jambon

Kembang mentéga (Nerium oleander Linn.) ya iku tetuwuhan perdu kang kalebu kulawarga Aponynaceae. Dhuwuré kembang iki 2-5 mèter. Godhongé awujud garis lansét kanthi dawa 7-20 cm lan ambané 1-3 cm. Godhong sing ndhuwur wernané ijo enom lan godhong sing ngisor wernané ijo tuwa lan rada kandel. Kembang mentéga wernané jambon nanging ana uga sing putih. Kembang majemuk kang wujudé kaya déné payung duwé benang sari warna kuning. Dhasaring makutha werna wungu kanthi dhiamèter 3-4 cm lan dawané 5 cm. Kembang mentéga ngasilaké woh polong kang akeh wijiné. Wiji iki atos tur kaku wernané ijo tuwa.

vāleti, lanu vaioleti vāleti, lanu hinehina

Ko e lolie ko e fuʻu ʻakau lahi ia, mita siʻisiʻi pē ʻi ʻolunga. ʻOku ʻi ai haʻane matalaʻiʻakau aʻu mei he hinehina ki he kulokula. ʻOku nau manongi, kā ko e ʻakau ʻomi ia, ʻa ia ʻoku ʻikai kau ki he kakala.

Tokanga: ʻOku fakakona kapau te ke kai ʻa e ʻakau. Mahalo pē feʻunga ki he mate ʻa e valevale ko e lau ʻe taha pē. ʻOku tatau mo e oleander ʻe taha, ko e pua kalipea

Nerium oleander (cunusìt mèi col sò nòm popolàr de Oleàndro; en lombàrt ocidentàl: oleander), l'è 'na spéce de piànta a portamènt arbüstìf o de piànta pesèna, de la famìa botànica de le Apocynaceae. Par che 'l sàpe uriginàre de l'Asia sudocidentàla, ma l'è isé difundìt che se pöl mìa dì con sigürèsa. Endèla zòna mediterànea el s'è natüralizàt e se 'l tróa tat come piànta salvàdega che come piànta ornamentàla.

Fòia de oleàndro (particolàr)

Böcc dei fiùr

Fiùr de oleàndro (particolàr)

Fröcc

Dr Oleander ghert zu de Hondsgiftgwächs ond werd au als Rosalorbeer bezoichnad. Am Oleander sand alle Doil gifdig. Er isch a immergreana, verholzanda Pflanz. Seine Blädder sand donklgrea, laedrig ond ogfähr zwischa 6 - 10 Zendimeder lang. Bliaha duat dr Olander zwischa Mitte Juni bis in da Sebdember nei.

Rûl, jale, ziqûm (nerium oleander) riwekek ji famîleya apocynaceae ye ku axûdar e (bijehr). Di nava mehên gulan û rezberê de kulîlk vedidin. Kulîlkên wê spî, sor, zer, helesor an ji rengê kremê ne. Bejna wê 2-5 m bilind dibe. Devên çeman, axa avî dijî. Zû bi zû hişk nabe, bi zivistanê pelan naweşîne. Di baxçeyan de bo dekorasyonê jî diajon.

Herçendî axûdar e jî, di bijîşkiyê de tê bikaranîn. Tevlî dermanên mîzewaqiyê sax dikin, dikin. Di kardiyolojîyê de herwiha sûd jê tê wergirtin. Tevlî kremên girê (gurî) derdibin jî dikin. Goştê ajalên ku bi rûlê mirine jî, bijehr e.

Η πικροδάφνη ή ροδοδάφνη (επιστημονική ονομασία Nerium oleander, Νήριον το ολέανδρον συνών. Νήριον η ροδοδάφνη) ανήκει στο γένος Νήριον (Nerium). Το είδος Ράιτια η αντιδυσεντερική (Wrightia antidysenterica) συν. Νήριον το αντιδυσεντερικόν (Nerium antidysentericum) είχε συμπεριληφθεί στο γένος παλαιότερα. Η ροδοδάφνη είναι ένας αειθαλής θάμνος της οικογένειας των αποκυνίδων που μπορεί να φτάσει σε ύψος 5 μέτρων, με τοξικά μέρη. Μεγαλώνει σε ηλιόλουστα μέρη με υγρό υπόστρωμα, όπως οι όχθες ποταμών σε χαμηλό υψόμετρο. Αντέχει επίσης τα ελαφρώς υφάλμυρα εδάφη. Πολλαπλασιάζεται πολύ εύκολα με μοσχεύματα. Έχει λογχοειδή, δερματώδη φύλλα και μονά ροζ-κόκκινα άνθη. Υπάρχουν και ποικιλίες με άσπρα, κίτρινα, μωβ και διπλά άνθη, οι οποίες καλλιεργούνται. Στην Ελλάδα είναι αυτοφυής, όπως και σε πολλά άλλα μέρη του κόσμου. Η τοξικότητα της πικροδάφνης οφείλεται στην τοξική ουσία νηριίνη, και έχει ως στόχο να προστατεύσει το φυτό από τις επιθέσεις ζώων.

Καρποί πικροδάφνης

Бедгул, харзаҳра (лот. Nérium) — буттаест ҳамешасабз ва ороишӣ.

Зокумот е растение од фамилијата Apocynaceae, и единствен вид од родот Nerium. Зокумот е трајно зелено растение, дрво или грмушка, со височина од 2-6 m. Листовите на растението се ланцентни, а по работ се неназабени. Цветовите се терминално поставени, во мали штитовидни групации, со бела, розова или црвена боја. Растението е распространето во земјите околу Средоземното Море.

Талгөл (олеандр, лат. Nerium oleander L., 1753) — кәндерчәләр гаиләлегенә караган чәчәкле үсемлек.

कण्हेर हे भारतात अनेक ठिकाणी आढळणारे एक झाड आहे. याच्या फुलांच्या रंगावरून यास पांढरा अथवा पिवळा कण्हेर असेही म्हणतात. याचे फळांना बिट्ट्या असे म्हणतात. वाळलेल्या फळांतील बियांचा वापर ग्रामीण भागातील मुली बैठ्या खेळासाठी करतात.

कनेर (द्विपद नामपद्धति: Nerium oleander या Nerium indicum, अंग्रेज़ी नाम: Oleander ) का फूल बहुत ही मशहूर है। कनेर के पेड़ की ऊंचाई लगभग 10 से 11 हाथ से ज्यादा बड़े नहीं होते हैं। पत्ते लम्बाई में 4 से 6 इंच और चौडाई में 1 इंच, सिरे से नोकदार, नीचे से खुरदरे, सफेद घाटीदार और ऊपर से चिकने होते है। कनेर के पेड़ वन और उपवन में आसानी से मिल जाते है। फूल खासकर गर्मियों के मौसम में ही खिलते हैं फलियां चपटी, गोलाकार 5 से 6 इंच लंबी होती है जो बहुत ही जहरीली होती हैं। फूलों और जड़ों में भी जहर होता है। कनेर की चार जातियां होती हैं। सफेद, लाल व गुलाबी और पीला। सफेद कनेर औषधि के उपयोग में बहुत आता है। कनेर के पेड़ को कुरेदने या तोड़ने से दूध निकलता है।

श्वेत करबीर वा सेतो कनेर (अङ्ग्रेजी: Nerium oleander या Nerium indicum, उच्चारण: /ˈnɪəriəm ˈoʊliː.ændər/) एपोसाइनेसिया परिवारमा पर्ने वनस्पति हो। यसको बिरुवा १०-१५ फिटसम्म अग्लो तथा सदाबहार हुन्छ।

કરેણ (અંગ્રેજી: Oleander, જૈવિક નામ: Nerium oleander) એ એક સપુષ્પીય વનસ્પતિ છે, જે સામાન્ય રીતે બાગમાં જોવા મળે છે. આ વનસ્પતિ છથી દશ ફૂટ જેટલટી ઊચાઇ ધરાવતું અને ધોળી, રાતી, પીળી, ગુલાબી રંગનાં એવા ચાર જાતોના ફૂલો વાળુ સર્વત્ર જોવા મળતું ફૂલઝાડ છે.

કરેણ સફેદ, પીળી તથા લાલ એમ ત્રણ જાતની થાય છે, જેમાં પીળી કરેણ અન્ય કરતાં વધુ ઝેરી હોય છે. સફેદ કરેણના મૂળને પાણીમાં ઘસી કપાળે લેપ કરવાથી કફ-વાયુની મસ્તકપીડા મટે છે.

દાદર થઈ હોય તો કરેણના પાનને શેરડી સાથેં વાટીને લેપ કરવો. સાપ કરડયો હોય કે વીંછીનો ડંખ લાગ્યો હોય તો ધોળી કરેણનું મૂળ પાણીમાં ઘસી ડંખ પર લેપ કરવો અને ૧-૨ ચમચી પાનનો રસ પી જવો. આમ કરવાથી જો બેચેની જેવું લાગે તો ઉપર થોડું ઘી પી જવું.

કરેણનું મૂળ ખોદી લાવી દર્દીના કાને બાંધવાથી મલેરિયા તાવ મટે છે. સફેદ કરેણના મૂળની છાલ, સફેદ ચણોઠીની દાળ તથા કાળા ધતૂરાનાં પાનની ચટણી કરી તલના તેલમાં ઉકાળી તે તેલનું લકવાગ્રસ્ત અંગ પણ માલિશ કરવાથી ધીમે ધીમે લકવો મટે છે.

அரளி, அலரி நச்சுத் தன்மை வாய்ந்த தாவரம். நீளமான இலைகளுடன் காட்சியளிக்கும் அரளி தாவரத்தில் செவ்வரளி, வெள்றரளி ஆகிய வகைகள் உள்ளன. இதன் மலர்மாலைகளைக் கோயில்களில் தெய்வ உருவங்களுக்குச் சார்த்துவர். திருக்கரவீரம், திருக்கள்ளில் முதலிய திருக்கோயில்களில் தலமரமாக அலரி உள்ளது. மலர்கள் காட்சிக்காக இங்கு வைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளன.

ಗಣಗಿಲೆ ಅಥವಾ ಕಣಗಿಲೆ ಹೂ ಜನ ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯರ ಹೂ. ಇದು ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಪ್ರದೇಶದಲ್ಲಿ, ತೊರೆ, ಹಳ್ಳಗಳ ಮಗ್ಗುಲಲ್ಲಿ ಒತ್ತೊತ್ತಾಗಿ ಅಥವಾ ಹಿಂಡು ಹಿಂಡಾಗಿ ಬೆಳೆಯುತ್ತದೆ. ಶುಭಕಾರ್ಯಗಳಿಂದ ಹಿಡಿದು ಸಾವಿನ ಮನೆಯವರೆಗೂ ಇದರ ಬಳಕೆಯಾಗುತ್ತದೆ.

Oleandro (Nerium oleander) estas ornamplanto kiu devenas el la mediteraneaj regionoj, kun ĉiamverdaj folioj kaj floroj blankaj, rozkoloraj, ruĝaj aŭ aslokoloraj.

Ĉiuj partoj de la planto estas venenaj, manĝo de unu folio povas esti mortiga por plenkreskulo per koraj problemoj.

Oleandro estas la nura specio en la palearktisa genro Nerium.

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Heriotzorri edo adelfa (Nerium oleander) Apozinazeoen familiako zuhaixka da, sasi modura hazten dena, 2-4 m luzea. Erramuaren antzeko hosto berde gogorrak eta iraunkorrak izaten ditu, tamainaz harenak baino luzeagoak. Loreak, arrosa kolorekoak, zuriak, gorriak edo horiak izan ditzake, bost hosto txikikoak. Mediterraneo itsasoaren inguruko lurraldeetan hazten da. Zurtoinetan eta hostoetan bihotza gerarazten duen gai pozoitsu bat du.

Oleanteri (Nerium oleander) on myrkyllinen pensaskasvi, jota käytetään myös huonekasvina. Kasvi sisältää mm. myrkyllistä sydänglykosideihin kuuluvaa oleandriinia. Oleanteri kuuluu oleanterikasvien (Apocynaceae) heimoon ja on Nerium-suvun ainoa laji. Siitä on yli 400 viljeltyä lajiketta.

Oleanteri kasvaa luonnonvaraisena Välimeren alueella ja Etelä-Aasiassa. Se kasvaa yli 6 metriä korkeaksi, mutta leikataan usein matalammaksi pensaaksi. Siitä tulee pyöreähkö, noin kolme metriä leveä pensas. Kapeat lehdet ovat eri lajikkeilla 10–25 cm pitkät.

Oleanteria kasvatetaan sen upeiden, usein tuoksuvien suppilomaisten kukkien vuoksi. Kukat tulevat terttuina versojen päihin, ja ne ovat lajikkeen mukaan joko yksinkertaisia, puolikerrannaisia tai kerrannaisia - värit vaihtelevat valkoisesta kermanväriseen, keltaiseen, aprikoosiin, lohen-, kuparin- ja vaaleanpunaiseen tai punaiseen, tummanpunaiseen ja violettiin. Kukan halkaisija voi olla jopa 5 cm, ja kukat ovat 6–8 kappaleen ryhmissä. Pienenä oleanteri sopii hyvin aurinkoiselle ikkunalaudalle ja suureksi kasvettuaan sen voi sijoittaa vaikkapa valoisaan kasvihuoneeseen.

O loendro ou adelfa (Nerium oleander) é un arbusto perenne da familia das apocináceas. É orixinario dunha extensa área que vai do Mediterráneo á China, aínda que se cultiva en todo o mundo. Medra preferentemente nas barrancas e cavorcos dende o nivel do mar ata os 1200 m de altitude. Consérvase ben nos períodos prolongados de seca. Chega ata os 2 m de altura, as súas flores son brancas, vermellas ou amarelas. A adelfa é unha das plantas máis perigosas, todas as súas partes son tóxicas, a inxestión dunha simple folla pode levar á morte dun adulto.

Loendro.

Oleander (łaćonsce Nerium oleander) je rostlina ze swójby barbjenkowych rostlinow (łaćonsce Apocynaceae). Dalše mejno je bobkownica. Wšě rostlinske dźěle su jědojte.

Oleander, bunga mentega atau bunga jepun (Nerium oleander) adalah tanaman perdu anggota keluarga Apocynaceae yang menghasilkan bunga sepanjang tahun Bunga jepun berasal dari Afrika bagian utara, bagian timur Mediterania dan juga Asia Tenggara. Tanaman ini tumbuh dengan baik pada daerah kering beriklim hangat dan dapat dibudidayakan di berbagai daerah.

Parastais oleandrs (Nerium oleander) ir mūžzaļš krūms vai mazs koks, kas ir vienīgā suga oleandru ģintī (Nerium), kas savukārt pieder pie oleandru dzimtas (Apocynaceae). Oleandri tiek audzēti kā krāšņumaugi, lai gan oleandra visas daļas ir indīgas. Piemēram, ja oleandra šūnsula nonāk uz ādas, tā rada apsārtumu, savukārt, ja nonāk acīs, var izsaukt aklumu. Tas ir viens no indīgākajiem augiem, kas tiek audzēts dārzā.

De oleander (Nerium oleander) is een plant uit de maagdenpalmfamilie (Apocynaceae). Het is een rijk vertakte, bossige, 2-6 m hoge struik of boom die giftig melksap bevat in alle vegetatieve delen. De bladeren staan meestal in kransen van drie tot vier stuks; in zeldzame gevallen staan ze tegenoverstaand. Ze zijn leerachtig, 10-22 cm lang, toegespitst en aan de basis in de steel versmallend. De middennerf is opvallend dik en de zijnerven zitten dicht op elkaar en lopen parallel.

De geurige bloemen groeien in eindstandige, veelbloemige schermen. De bloemkroon is wit tot rozerood of geel van kleur, 3-4 cm breed en opgebouwd uit een trechtervormige bloembuis en vijf scheef afgesneden, wielvormig uitgespreide, in de knop gedraaide kroonslippen. In de keel zit een bijkroon van vijf getande of ingesneden aanhangsels. De kelk is vijftallig en aan de binnenkant dicht met klierharen bezet. De meeldraden zitten boven in de kroonbuis vast, maar steken niet uit.

De vruchten zijn langwerpige, 8-18 cm lange, roodachtig bruine, rechtopstaande doosvruchten die bij rijpheid openklappen. De zaden dragen een lange, bruine haarkuif.

De oleander komt voor in het Middellandse Zeegebied, Zuid-Portugal en van Iran tot in Oost-Azië. Hij komt voor op stenige gronden, overstroomde oevers en in periodiek droge beekbeddingen. Er bestaan cultivars met gevulde bloemen.

Volgens Theophrastus werd de oleander op de veldtocht van Alexander de Grote als gifplant gebruikt. Hieronymus Bock en Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Matthiolus) duidden de oleander in hun kruidenboeken (1565 en 1626) aan als demonenkruid dat mens en vee kon doden. Vroeger werden aftreksels of tincturen van de bladeren als menstruatiebevorderend middel en als abortivum ingezet.

De bladeren bevatten flavonoïden en een groot aantal giftige verbindingen, waaronder oleandrine en neroside. Deze glycosiden werken op het hart, maar minder sterk dan de glycosiden uit vingerhoedskruid. In India en Sri Lanka komen opzettelijke zelfvergiftigingen geregeld voor. In de geneeskunde vindt het geen toepassing. Honderd gram van de plant zou voldoende zijn om een paard te doden.

Oleander (Nerium oleander) er en eviggrønn busk eller lite tre i gruppen Apocynaceae. Oleander er en subtropisk plante som vokser i et vidt område fra Marokko og Portugal til Kina, der den som oftest danner kratt langs bekker, vassdrag og elveleier som tørker ut om sommeren.

Oleander har vært dyrket i middelhavslandene siden klassisk oldtid. Den er fortsatt en vanlig prydplante i hager og parker i de sørligere deler av Europa, og brukes som hekk langs mange veier. Den har vært dyrket i oransjerier på slott siden 1600-tallet. I Norge har oleander vært brukt som potteplante. Den er svært glad i sol og trives godt utendørs om sommeren. Som mange andre planter fra middelhavsområdet vil den gjerne ha en kjøligere hvileperiode om vinteren.

I vill tilstand kan den bli en svær busk på opptil fem meter i høyden og seks meter i diameter. Blomstene er hjulformet, fylte eller enkle, og sitter gruppevis ytterst på stengelen. De har en behagelig, mild duft. Den naturlige fargen på blomstene er rosa, men de dyrkede formene fins i flere rosa nyanser samt hvitt. Bladene er lange, smale og læraktige.

Planten er uhyre giftig, og bare litt av plantesaften er nok til å ta livet av barn og skape store problemer for voksne. Den inneholder kraftigvirkende hjerteglykosider. Forgiftninger sees på uregelmessig hjertevirksomhet, kramper og forstørrede pupiller. Planten er kjent for å holde på giften selv etter uttørking. I Sør-Europa har folk blitt forgiftet av å grille kjøtt på greiner av oleander. Røyken som utvikles ved brenning er også giftig. Det er viktig at man er klar over at dersom man ønsker å dyrke oleander må man aldri plassere den i små barns rekkevidde. Selv små doser av giften kan få alvorlige konsekvenser. Man kjenner imidlertid ikke til mange tilfeller av alvorlig forgiftning hos mennesker.

Oleander har likevel vært svært populær fordi den er vakker og fordi det ikke er så mange andre blomstrende planter som tåler så mye sol og varme som den.

Oleander (Nerium L.) – rodzaj krzewów lub drzew należący do rodziny toinowatych. Przedstawiciele (dwa gatunki) występują w stanie dzikim na obszarze śródziemnomorskim, podzwrotnikowym: Europa, Afryka, Azja, Japonia, często przy wysychających korytach strumieni.

Nerium oleander /ˈnɪəriəm ˈoʊliː.ændər/ este un arbust sau arbore mic din familia Apocynaceae, cu toate părțile toxice. Este singura specie clasificată în prezent a genului Nerium. El este cunoscut în special sub numele de nerium, leandru sau oleandru din cauza asemănării superficiale cu măslinii Olea. Este cultivat pe scară largă în prezent astfel că regiunea sa de origine nu a fost identificată precis, deși s-a sugerat că ar fi Asia de sud-vest. Numele orașului antic Volubilis din Maroc ar putea fi o latinizare a cuvântului berber oualilt care desemnează această floare. Leandrul este una dintre cele mai otrăvitoare plante de grădină frecvent cultivate.

Navadni oleander (znanstveno ime Nerium oleander) je zimzelen grm ali majhno drevo iz družine Apocynaceae (pasjestrupovk). Zaenkrat je edina vrsta klasificirana v rodu Nerium. Obstaja veliko drugih imen za to rastlino. Starodavno maroško mesto Volubilis se imenuje po starem latinskem imenu za rastlino. Izmed rastlin, ki se pogosto gojijo na vrtu, je oleander eden najbolj strupenih. V primeru zaužitja večjih količin je lahko zelo toksičen.