4 MB, BUNBUKY ON THE BOTANY OF MADEIRA. 



whatever direction the botanist proceeds inland, he finds himself 

 sorely hampered by far-stretching stone walls and paved roads. 

 The majority of the wild plants that grow about Funchal, in the 

 coast-region, are such as come under the common denomination of 

 weeds, most of them wide-spread European species ; together with 

 some naturalized colonists from South America and the Cape* 



One of the first excursions generally made from Funchal by 

 strangers is that to Nossa Senhora do Monte, upwards of 1900 

 feet above the sea-level. This is an excursion very unprofitable to 

 the botanist, although he will meet with a few Ferns on the walls 

 by the roadside, and will notice, along the margins of the little 

 watercourses, great abundance of a delicate Commelyna^, a plant 

 of an exotic aspect, and of a non-European family. This is one 

 of the characteristic plants of the lower regiorr of the south 

 side of Madeira, and, together with Ageratum eonyzoides^ Bidens 

 leucantJia, Gnaphaliwm luteo-album, and Oxalis corniculata, is seen 

 in all wet places, especially in the beds of torrenf s and on the 

 margins of brooks and watercourses. All of the plants just enu- 

 merated are species very widely distributed. 



One striking characteristic of Madeira is the rapidity with which 

 exotic plants become naturalized. This process is going on so fast, 

 that it is difficult, and is constantly becoming more difficult, to 

 udge wliat plants are really native, and what are introduced. For 

 example: a beautiful cherry-coloured Oxalis (0. speciosa?), from 

 the Cape of Good Hope, was introduced into the island by a lady 

 still living there, and is now thorouglily established as a wild plant, 

 and very abundant in many places, not only in cultivated fields, 

 but on rough, wild, broken ground amidst the fir plantations. So 

 also the Pelargonium capitatmn and the Salvia pseudo-eoccinea are 

 completely naturalized in various places. The Datura arhorea and 

 Fuchsia coccinea are rapidly establishing themselves : the former 

 grows apparently wild, and forms whole thickets, on the bank of a 

 stream in the Boa Ventura Valley ; the Fuchsia grows like a native, 

 and in great abundance, among the Vaccinium and other indigenous 

 shrubs, on the hills near Santa Anna. 



It is very probable that many other plants, of which the exotic 

 origin cannot so easily be traced, may in like manner have been 

 introduced into Madeira in modern times, through the agency, 

 either voluntary or accidental, of man. Perhaps even the greater 

 number of those South European species, which are the " weeds " 

 of cultivated lands in Madeira, ought to be placed in the category 



a agraria (Kunth, Enumeratio Plantarum), if I am not mistaken. 



1 



■77 





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