Aleurites Moluccana (The Candle-Nut Tree)
Much interest is attached to this tree, which is found in India, Malaya, and North-east Australia, and occurs all over the Pacific, extending north to Hawaii, south to the Kermadec Islands, and east to Tahiti and Pitcairn Island (Maiden). In the Hawaiian Islands it is often so frequent as to form whole forests, or at all events to give a character to the forest zone up to 2,000 feet above the sea. Its prevalence in Hawaii might be regarded as evidence of its indigenous character; but its predominance there is due to the circumstance that it is one of the few forest-trees that the cattle and other animals avoid, most other trees falling victim to their depredations by the loss of the bark. In Fiji, though frequent in places, it does not form such a conspicuous feature in the vegetation as in Hawaii. In Samoa it is abundant in the coast-bush. In Rarotonga it forms with Hibiscus tiliaceus, as we learn from Cheeseman, the major portion of the lower forests, a circumstance which seems to indicate, since both these trees were probably introduced by the natives, that this island like Hawaii has lost or is losing many of its original forest-trees. In Tahiti, according to Nadeaud, it is common from the sea-level up to 3,000 feet above the sea.
As a Polynesian tree, Aleurites moluccana presents itself to me as an intruder which has often taken the place of trees of the primeval forests of these islands. That the natives usually employ the oily seeds for illuminating purposes is well known; and its prevailing name of Tuitui (Kukui in Hawaii) is derived from the Polynesian custom of threading the seeds before using them for lighting purposes. One of the Fijian names, “Sikethi,” is suggestive of “Saketa,” a name for the tree in the Ternate dialect of the Indian Archipelago. To the modes of dispersal of this tree, I have devoted much attention.
The more or less empty seeds of this tree are to be commonly found floating in rivers and stranded on beaches. I have found them in numbers on the beaches of Fiji and Hawaii in the Pacific, and of the south coast of Java and of Keeling Atoll in the Indian Ocean. In all I have examined many hundreds of these seeds, whether stranded on the beaches in the localities above named, or floating in the Fijian rivers and at sea amongst the islands of that archipelago. The seeds were always either empty or contained a kernel in an advanced stage of decay. A sound seed has no floating power under any condition; and sound seeds are only to be found in beach drift near the mouths of estuaries, where they have been freed by the decay of the fruits brought down by the rivers. During some dredging operations in the harbour at Honolulu several years ago, quantities of old Aleurites fruits and seeds were brought up. It is only by means of the floating fruit that the sound seed can be carried any distance by the currents; but even in this case the opportunities of wide dispersal are very limited. If one places in sea-water a number of well-dried fruits, most of them will sink within a week, and all will be at the bottom in a fortnight.
The seeds stranded on a beach are often found cracked. This I think arises from long exposure to the scorching rays of the sun. On account of the hardness of the shell it is very difficult to obtain the kernel entire; but the Mangaians get over this difficulty, as we learn from the Rev. Wyatt Gill, by slightly baking the seeds; whilst the Fijians, according to Mr. Horne, effect the same object by throwing the heated seeds into cold water. On one occasion I placed an empty seed on a tin plate kept at a temperature 115° to 120° F., a temperature near that which the seed would acquire when lying exposed to the sun on a tropical beach. After five days I found it had reproduced the cracks noticed in another empty seed from the Keeling beach.
Facts are not wanting with regard to the dispersal of the seeds by birds; but since the kernel alone is sought for by birds, and as there is no means of cracking the shell in their stomachs, such an agency is only available for local distribution. The Messrs. Layard inform us that in New Caledonia a small crow (Physocorax moneduloides) and a parrot (Nymphicus cornutus) are very partial to these seeds (Ibis, 1882). They were told that the crow cracked them by carrying them to a considerable height and letting them fall on a stone. We are not told how the parrot cracks the seed, which has a shell so hard that the Malays, I may remark, term the seed “bua kras,” or “the hard seed,” whilst a hammer is required to break it. However, since Indian parrots, according to Mr. J. Scott, are able to split open with their beaks the hard beans of Adenanthera pavonina (More Letters of Charles Darwin, ii, 349), they evidently possess ingenuity in seed-cracking.
My general conclusion with reference to this tree in Polynesia is that it could not have been distributed, except locally, by birds and currents; and that it owes its dispersion there principally to man. A contrary indication seems to be offered by the occurrence of the tree in the uninhabited Kermadec group; but since Cordyline terminalis also exists there, a cultivated plant widely dispersed by the Polynesians, it would appear that these islanders have formerly visited the group. It is also contended by Canon Walsh that the Cordyline of the Maoris was introduced into New Zealand by that race. (See Cheeseman in vols. xx and xxxiii, Trans. N.Z. Inst., for papers on the Kermadec flora and on the food-plants of the Polynesians.)