Discovery
Puka first came to European attention when William Colenso found a single tree growing at the head of Whangururu Bay in Northland (on the New Zealand mainland). This tree was protected by a fence, and declared sacred by Māori, who told Colenso that they had brought the tree from the Poor Knights Islands. Colenso made frequent visits to Whangaruru Bay over several years in the vain hope of procuring flowers and fruit. Colenso pointed out the tree to Dr Andrew Sinclair, (1794–1861), Colonial Secretary and naturalist, for whom the tree would eventually be named. Colenso and Sinclair sent specimens of the foliage to Kew. Later William Mair found the tree, and he eventually succeeded in procuring specimens of the leaves and fruit, which were forwarded to Dr Joseph Hooker at Kew. From these specimens the original description of the tree was made under the name Botryodendrum sinclairii.
Read more about this topic: Meryta Sinclairii
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)