Pseudopanax 'Moas Toes'

Lancewood 'Moas Toes' Araliaceae

One of the more entertaining products of New Zealand’s modern native-plant horticulture — and a plant with a name that needs remarkably little explanation. The thick, leathery leaves are divided into three chunky lobes, looking rather like the enormous toes of a moa, those wonderfully bizarre and unfortunately extinct giants of the New Zealand avifauna. Glossy green when young, the foliage can develop handsome dark red to purple tones, particularly in good light and during cooler weather. It is difficult to look at it without thinking that somebody has given a Pseudopanax a pair of prehistoric feet.

‘Moa’s Toes’ is a relatively recent New Zealand selection and appears to have arisen within the country’s increasingly adventurous native-plant industry rather than being an old garden form. It was already in the New Zealand nursery trade by 2014, and is now commercially propagated there, including by specialist producers such as Waimea. The cultivar is protected by New Zealand Plant Variety Rights NZPVR31743, under the breeding code TEX05. Its parentage is rather less straightforward: it is widely sold as Pseudopanax lessonii ‘Moa’s Toes’, while Kiwiflora gives the name Pseudopanax × hybrida ‘Moa’s Toes’. 

In the garden it makes an unusually handsome evergreen shrub, eventually forming a substantial, upright plant with a wonderfully architectural quality. Give it sun or light shade and reasonably well-drained soil; it is considerably tougher than its exotic appearance might suggest. Indeed, our own plant at Edulis has already survived the infamous ‘Beast from the East’, the severe cold spell of February–March 2018, when temperatures at the nursery fell to around -10°C. It may have looked rather less like a New Zealand native afterwards, but it came through and lived to grow another set of moa toes. That is considerably more convincing evidence of British garden-worthiness than a hardiness label printed on a pot.

A splendid plant for the adventurous shrub border, woodland edge or anywhere requiring evergreen foliage with a touch of the prehistoric. New Zealand may have lost its moa, but fortunately it kept the toes.

Hardiness: H4/H5 (-10 to -5°C)
Height: 1.5–2.5 m
Spread: 1–2 m
Foliage: Evergreen, glossy, leathery, green, often flushed red-purple
Flowers: Inconspicuous
Origin: New Zealand horticultural selection
Season of interest: Year-round