#myoporum

Myoporum turbinatum

18-SEP-2025

AKA Myoporum crystallinum, Myoporum perforatum and Myoporum pubescens.

First described in 1786 by Georg Forster in Florulae Insularum Australium Prodromus. The specific epithet laetum means "cheerful, pleasant or bright".

The dots of the leaves are glands containing, among other things, liver toxin ngaione, making the plant very dangerous to livestock. The Māori would rub the leaves over their skin as an insect repellant. The glands were also the subject of Catherine Alexander's 1886 paper "Observations on the Glands in the Leaf and Stem of Myoporum lætum, Forster" , which was the first scientific paper by a woman published in New Zealand.

According to Māori legend, a Ngaio tree can be seen on the Moon.

The man in the moon becomes, in Māori legend, a woman, one Rona by name. This lady, it seems, once had occasion to go by night for water to a stream. In her hand she carried an empty calabash. Stumbling in the dark over stones and the roots of trees she hurt her shoeless feet and began to abuse the moon, then hidden behind clouds, hurling at it some such epithet as "You old tattooed face, there!" But the moon-goddess heard, and reaching down caught up the insulting Rona, calabash and all, into the sky. In vain the frightened woman clutched, as she rose, the tops of a ngaio-tree. The roots gave way, and Rona with her calabash and her tree are placed in the front of the moon for ever, an awful warning to all who are tempted to mock at divinities in their haste.

A hardy coastal plant introduced to several other countries including Portugal, South Africa and Namibia, and considered an invasive species in California.

One of 28 species of evergreen shrubs and small trees usually found in Australia and Papua New Guinea, but with representatives in Mauritius, eastern Asia, Aotearoa and Hawaii.

(See also the highly regarded detective fiction writer Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh (1895 – 1982), who may have been named after the plant.)

VOSHELL

4: A memory that your character cherishes - Her hair is red like the sun through autumn leaves, and her eyes flash like quicksilver. “You are lucky,” she says, “that we are where we are. Otherwise I would have to strike you down where you stand.”

“You would be more than welcome to try,” he responds in his characteristically cool way, despite the tension that pulls taut his every muscle. “And if you are serious about your threat, I am leaving in a scant few hours.”

Her grin, he notes, is as enchanting as her eyes. 

3: A memory from your character’s career - While not really a Moment of Illustrious Glory, occasionally he remembers the first time he took a harpy’s life. You know how when creatures die, they typically void their bowels? Turns out that it’s like three times nastier when a harpy does it.

MYOPORUM

8: Something that makes your character laugh - Python faces, inasfar as he finds them so overloadingly adorable that he can’t help but to release that excess squee into laughter. He has to try hard not to boop snoot!

MYOPORUM

4: A memory that your character cherishes - He fondly remembers a human nobleman-and-ranger named Jake, to whom he was a companion for a few months. The first time they met, Myoporum was at the Plaza of Dwayna, musing aloud the mystifying properties of ‘cotton candy’ - which was not cotton at all and had the strange penchant of disappearing in seconds when put in the mouth. 

6: Something that makes your character angry - Anger is not an emotion that comes very easily to Myoporum; for him it swiftly transforms into its stronger brother - resolve. That being said, the things that cause this transmutation most often are cases of abuse toward the innocent, whether it be physical, mental, or verbal.

9: Something that frightens your character - Like anger, fear is a very fleeting thing for Myo, quickly replaced by hope, or at least a mild sense of uncertainty. This cycle happens most often when he contemplates the futures of his friends, when he considers their actions with their problems.

19: What your character does when they wake up - If it’s possible, he’ll take a time out and sit in the nude to soak up ‘nature’ for a little bit. Even in an area with little plant life he’ll do this - nature is almost everywhere for him.

VOSHELL

6: Something that makes your character angry - Voshell hasn’t been truly angry in a long time. Somehow, he just seems above that. But he can experience a sort of simmering impatience when people refuse to work with him and his ideas (which he naturally sees as the best ideas). 

7: Something that makes your character happy - Besides unbridled exploration of the new? Well, he really likes fruit, specifically fruit pies. Any time where he can have an entire cherry pie is a good time.

8: Something that makes your character laugh - It may seem obvious, but clever humor and banter is a quick way to get him to laugh. A sense of spontaneity on other peoples’ parts is also a solid method!