Pittosporum eugenioides A. Cunn.

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Pittosporum eugenioides' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/pittosporum/pittosporum-eugenioides/). Accessed 2024-03-18.

Common Names

  • Tarata

Glossary

corymb
Unbranched inflorescence with lateral flowers the pedicels of which are of different lengths making the inflorescence appear flat-topped.
glabrous
Lacking hairs smooth. glabrescent Becoming hairless.

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Pittosporum eugenioides' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/pittosporum/pittosporum-eugenioides/). Accessed 2024-03-18.

An evergreen tree 20 to 40 ft high, densely branched; young shoots glabrous, darkly coloured. Leaves clustered towards the end of each season’s growth, narrowly oval or oblong, tapered at each end, 2 to 5 in. long, 12 to 114 in. wide, perfectly glabrous on both surfaces, dark glossy green above, paler beneath; margins often wavy, stalk 14 to 34 in. long. Flowers very fragrant, 116 in. wide, yellowish, densely and numerously packed in a cluster of short corymbs terminating the branch, each corymb 1 in. or less long; flower-stalks downy; petals strap-shaped, 18 in. long; sepals much smaller. Fruits 14 in. long, egg-shaped.

Native of New Zealand, where it occurs on both islands up to 2,500 ft altitude. Requiring winter protection at Kew, it is perfectly hardy in the milder parts more to the south and west and makes a handsome evergreen tree there, up to 30 ft or more high. The honey-like scent of the flowers is very charming and widely diffused. The leaves are also fragrant when crushed, and from them and the flowers, mixed with fat, the Maoris made an unguent with which they anointed their bodies.


'Variegatum'

In this form the leaf has a creamy-white margin of irregular width. Seen in Cornish gardens, usually as a small tree of columnar shape, with its peculiarly clean, clear leaf-colouring, it strikes one as about the most attractive of all variegated shrubs grown in the open air. It flowers just as freely as the normal green form, and is said to be hardier. It was introduced to cultivation in the early 1880s. There is an example 34 ft high at Bosahan, Cornwall, and two almost as tall at Castlewellan, Co. Down.