From Ferdinand von Mueller to the Australasian   [Dec 1865]

Through the attention of Commander Norman, the officers of the Victoria, and Captain Musgrave, who kindly responded to a request of returning for some plants sent to the Auckland Islands such as proved most interesting and useful to the wrecked crew on the group, the Director of the Botanic Garden has received, among other vegetable productions, a quantity of roots of the plant which served mainly as a vegetable during the long miseries of the exiled sailors at Auckland Island.¹ This plant proves to be the Aralia polaris of the French naturalists Hombran² and Tarquinot,³ to whose work Voyage au Pole Sud, we owe the first account of this plant.⁴ Dr. Hooker, the celebrated companion of Sir James Ross in his antarctic expedition, has given detailed scientific notes on this species, peculiar to the antarctic islands; but though this famous naturalist recorded in his work on the phytological results of the southern polar expedition of the Erebus and Terror, that 'the whole plant is greedily eaten by goats, pigs, and rabbits,' we learned only through the sagacity and experience of the captain and crew of the Grafton that the root of this aralia can be employed, In cases of emergency, as human food.⁵ In China and Japan, the roots of a congeneric plant, the Aralia edulis, serves as a culinary vegetable; hence it is not unlikely that those of some other araliaceous plants may turn out useful for a similar purpose. In Britain, these plants have their ordinal representative in the common soy.

Aralia edulis

Aralia polaris