Distribution
Twenty of the twenty-one species are found on the island of Grande Terre (the main island of New Caledonia). Three species occur on the adjacent island of Île des Pins, two on Lifou and one on Maré in the Loyalty Islands, and two on Vanuatu (including one introduced species).
Oxera vanuatuensis is only known from Vanuatu, where it is only known from cultivated specimens. Villagers on Pentecost Island (and their descendants on Maewo call the tree harongmau, and propagate the species by planting seeds, transplanting seedlings or taking cuttings. The plant is thought to treat illnesses caused by black magic, and profuse flowering from the trunk is thought to foretell a good harvest of yams.
Read more about this topic: Oxera
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“My topic for Army reunions ... this summer: How to prepare for war in time of peace. Not by fortifications, by navies, or by standing armies. But by policies which will add to the happiness and the comfort of all our people and which will tend to the distribution of intelligence [and] wealth equally among all. Our strength is a contented and intelligent community.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)