The South Pacific nation of New Zealand is the ancestral home of the Maori, sea-faring settlers from the eastern Polynesia. With its unique flora and fauna, New Zealand offers a large array of plants ...

New Zealand flax, Phormium tenax, is practically a bum in our area: ubiquitous, homely, sometimes obtrusive and abrasive, a conspicuous surviving castaway in tough neighborhoods from gas-station ...

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIANS first planted Phormium en masse about a century ago, and with good reason: Those spiky leaves -- long and linear, a muted green that seemed custom-made for this landscape -- were ...