350 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



steam is continually issuing at a temperature of at least 150° Fahren- 

 heit. The plant is, essentially, a warm-country species, tropical and 

 extratropical, in Asia, Africa, and America : and thus in Europe the 

 only place of growth is that where the heat is, as it were, especially 

 suited to it. The question naturally arises, how did the plant find 

 its way to this single spot? for it "grows only," Mr. Sanford ob- 

 served, " on a space about thirty feet in diameter, in this heated atmo- 

 sphere." Professor Tenore offers the following theory, in his observa- 

 tions on the subject. 



** It grows exclusively in the island of Ischia, and close to the little 



es {fumai 

 longifolia 



lie) of Frasso and of Cacciotti. It is accompanied 

 : it is perennial, and flowers in June. Both these 

 plants strike their roots deep into the soft soil of the fimarole^ where 

 the temperature is of 50 to 60 degrees (of Eeaumur); and they cannot 

 be plucked up without scorching one's hands. The atmosphere has a 

 heat of 30 degrees. ,When removed to the Eoyal Botanic Garden of 

 Florence, and left in the open ground, these plants were unable to bear 

 the cold of winter, and it was found necessarv tn shalher them in the 



stoves." ^ 



How can this Ci/perus, a native of the Cape of Good Hope and the 

 East Indies, and its companion, Pteris longifolia, hitherto only found in 

 Jamaica and Hispaniola ; — how, I say, can we account for their growing 

 in this single spot, of all Europe, and exclusively in a locality where 

 circumstances create a climate wholly different from that of the sur- 

 rounding countries, and which resembles the atmosphere of the blazing 

 Tropics ? Eor the solving of this question, many conjectures may pos- 

 sibly be offered; and among them I have lighted upon one, over-bold 

 perhaps, and certainly very strange, but which 1 shall still venture to pro- 

 pound here 3 it is, that the successive reproductions of this plant have 

 resisted the force of ages, and enabled it to perpetuate itself through 

 all those atmospherical catastrophes which have altered the climate of 

 Europe, because its seeds have been developed in that high temperature, 

 which the half-extinguished volcanoes still preserve in the bowels of the 

 island of Ischia." 



The fact of its growing in this locality is so well known to the 



Italians, that the plant is called " Cipero d'lscJiia,'' and " Giunco delle 

 fumaroUy 



