al, which, however,
yields bushes growing with great luxuriance, and is sometimes planted,
not unsuccessfully, by the natives.

"Of cultivated fruits, the principal are plantains, of which they have
fifteen different sorts or varieties; breadfruit; two sorts of fruit
found at Otaheite, and known there under the names of _jambu_ and
_geevee_; the latter a kind of plumb; and vast numbers of shaddocks,
which, however, are found as often in a natural state, as planted.

"The roots are yams, of which are two sorts; one black, and so large,
that it often weighs twenty or thirty pounds; the other white and long,
seldom weighing a pound; a large root called _kappe_; one not unlike our
white potatoes, called _mawhaha_; the _talo_, or _coccos_ of other
places; and another named _jeejee_.

"Besides vast numbers of cocoa-nut trees, they have three other sorts of
palms, two of which are very scarce. One of them is called _beeoo_,
which grows almost as high as the cocoa-tree, has very large leaves
plaited like a fan, and clusters or bunches of globular nuts, not larger
than a small pistol ball, growing amongst the branches, with a very hard
kernel, which is sometimes eat. The other is a kind of cabbage-tree, not
distinguishable from the cocoa, but by being rather thicker, and by
having its leaves more ragged. It has a cabbage three or four feet long;
at the top of which are the leaves, and at the bottom the fruit, which
is scarcely two inches long, resembling an oblong cocoa-nut, with an
insipid tenacious kernel, called, by the natives, _neeoogoola_, or red
cocoa-nut, as it assumes a reddish cast when ripe. The third sort is
called _ongo ongo_, and much commoner, being generally found planted
about their _fiatookas_. It seldom grows higher than five feet, though
sometimes to eight, and has a vast number of oval compressed nuts, as
large as a pippin, sticking immediately to the trunk, amongst the
leaves, which are not eat. There is plenty of excellent sugar-cane,
which is cultivated; gourds, bamboo, turmeric, and a species of fig,
about the size of a small cherry, called _matte_, which, though wild, is
sometimes eat. But the catalogue of uncultivated plants is too large to
be enumerated here. Besides the _pemphis decaspermum, mallococca, maba_,
and some other new genera, described by Dr Forster,[170] there are a few
more found here, which, perhaps, the different seasons of the year, and
his short stay, did not give him an opportunit