Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia

by Edward Ellis Morris

1845. E. J. Wakefield, `Adventures in New Zealand,' c. i. p. 270:

[The house was] "covered with thick coating of the leaves of the nikau (a kind of palm) and tufts of grass."

1854. W. Golder, `Pigeons' Parliament,' [Note] p. 75:

"The <i>necho</i> or <i>neko</i> is a large tree-like plant known elsewhere as the mountain cabbage."

1862. `All the Year Round,' `From the Black Rocks on Friday,' May 17, No. 160:

"I found growing, as I expected, amongst the trees abundance of the wild palm or nikau. The heart of one or two of these I cut out with my knife. The heart of this palm is about the thickness of a man's wrist, is about a foot long, and tastes not unlike an English hazel-nut, when roasted on the ashes of a fire. It is very nutritious."

1882. T. H. Potts, `Out in the Open,' p. 86:

"The pale green pinnate-leaved nikau."

1888. Cassell's `Picturesque Australasia,' vol. iii. p. 210:

"With the exception of the kauri and the nekau-palm nearly every tree which belongs to the colony grows in the `seventy-mile bush' of Wellington."