Mussænda frondosa
Mussænda frondosa is the only one of the sixty species of this tropical Asiatic and African genus that extends into Polynesia. This beautiful shrub, which is easily recognised by its conspicuous white, leaf-like calyx lobe, is common everywhere in Fiji, decorating, as Horne fitly remarks, in the contrast presented by its golden flowers, its large white calyx leaf, and its green foliage, many an acre of waste, grassy land, where the orange-coloured doves and the red and the green parrots flit to and fro. With its home in India, China, and Malaya, it ranges all over the South Pacific, from the Solomon Islands to Tahiti. Its berries contain an abundance of small, minutely-pitted seeds, 0·7 mm. or 1⁄35 of an inch in size, and weighing when well dried about 600 to the grain. The seeds retain after years of drying the property of clinging to passing objects by means of a few microscopic, thread-like fibres, that are attached to their surfaces. In this manner they will fasten themselves to the point of a knife, and the observer is astonished to see them dangling in the air from a pin’s point. I suppose that this is connected with some hygroscopic quality. At all events, it would enable these light seeds to be carried about not only by birds and bats but also by insects. It is possible that man has aided in the dispersal of this interesting plant; but birds, bats, and insects have, I think, mainly done the work.