Cordyline Comm. ex R.Br.
Tufted to arborescent perennials. Trunk woody, with characteristic secondary thickening, the stout axis continued vertically downwards in an equally stout rhizome (sometimes 2). Leaves crowded in tufts at ends of branched or unbranched stems, long-linear to narrow-elliptic, ± petiolate, with strong fibrous veins. Inflorescence a terminal panicle soon pushed aside by a leafy shoot from axil of adjacent leaf; bracts leaf-like. Flowers bisexual, small, actinomorphic, pedicellate; each pedicel with 2 chaffy bracts; perianth-tube short, becoming ± fleshy; lobes subequal, spreading. Staminal-filaments ± flattened; anthers dorsifixed and versatile. Ovary superior; stigma ± 3-lobed; ovules several to many in each locule. Fruit a globose berry. Seeds usually curved, black. Spp. c. 15, scattered from India to N.Z. and pacific, also recorded in S. America. Native spp. 5, adventive 1.
Key
Universally called "cabbage trees"; the Maori generic name is "Ti".
Leaves of Cordyline should be viewed against a light: the veins may be translucent or opaque in fresh leaves, not evident or dark in dried ones: transverse veinlets are not visible in fresh leaves, but are dark and opaque in several spp. in dried material.
