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Story: Shrubs and small trees of the forest

Growth forms of lancewood

  • Juvenile lancewood

  • Adolescent lancewood

  • Adult lancewood

One of the oddities in New Zealand’s forest is horoeka – the lancewood (Pseudopanax crassifolius). Beginning life as a single-stemmed plant with one-metre-long stiff, drooping leaves, it changes when its growing tip is about three metres above the ground. The plant begins to branch and develops short (20 centimetre), upright leaves. The adult tree grows to about 15 metres tall and supports a many-branched, rounded crown of short, leathery leaves.

Click to see different stages of lancewood's growth.

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Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

by Maggy Wassilieff

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How to cite this page

Joanna Orwin, Shrubs and small trees of the forest – Species with juvenile and adult forms, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/13809/growth-forms-of-lancewood (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Joanna Orwin, published 1 March 2009, updated 1 July 2015.

Comments

michael abrahamson
08 April 2020
I always wondered why the juvenile lancewood had very narrow leaves and adolescent plant fatter leaves. Attenborough concludes in video "Kingdom of plants ", 2012, a type of coffee plant survived from being eaten by tortoises because of this exact same mechanism.Now what animal was there in New Zealand. Was there a tortoise here too?