30 Mr. C. C. Babington's List of Plants gathered 



VII. — List of Plants gathered during a short visit to Iceland in 

 1846. By Charles C. Babington, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S. &c* 



It may perhaps be said that the following list 'of Icelandic 

 plants is scarcely deserving of the space which it occupies, con- 

 taining as it does so very few additions even to Hooker's ' Ice- 

 landic Flora ' contained in his ' Tour in Iceland/ and still fewer 

 to VahPs ' Liste des Plantes ' published in Gaimard's f Voyage en 

 Islande' (Min. et Geol. p. 371). That fact however is itself 

 deserving of notice, from its proving that those parts of the island 

 to which the researches of most botanists have been necessarily 

 confined were very carefully examined, and that therefore M. 

 VahPs f Liste ■ of 432 flowering plants is not a very imperfect 

 catalogue of the Icelandic flora. 



Circumstances over which I had no control restricted the 

 time which I could devote to collecting plants in Iceland within 

 very narrow limits, — far narrower than I had promised myself 

 when leaving England. We landed at Reikiavic on June 29, 

 1846, and sailed from that port on July 13, after which day a 

 continuance of stormy weather detained us so long off the Ice- 

 landic coast as effectually to prevent a visit which we had planned 

 to some of the Fiords in the eastern part of the island. My 

 collections were therefore confined to that small south-western 

 district which was examined by several former visitants. The 

 barren character of the country surrounding Reikiavic renders it 

 very unpropitious to the botanist, and the long journey on horse- 

 back to and from the Geysers is not favourable to collecting. 



The neighbourhood of Reikiavic consists of low hills, the sur- 

 face of which is fully half covered with lumps of rock and large 

 stones, between which the soil, although fertile in appearance and 

 probably in reality, is often nearly devoid of vegetation ; scattered 

 plants of Dryas octopetala, Lychnis alpina, Cerastium latifolium, 

 Arenaria norvegica and a few other species were observed. The 

 lower grounds are very boggy, but far from rich in plants ; a very 

 few species of Carex and Scirpus occupying nearly the whole 

 surface. 



The above description will apply to a considerable portion of 

 the country which we visited, but occasionally a small hollow 

 occurred covered by a beautiful turf (Festuca ovina and Poa pra- 

 tensis chiefly), amongst which grew rather numerous specimens 

 of Geranium sylvaticum, Orchis latifolia, Habenaria viridis and 

 H. hyperborea. Such spots were mostly very small. Near Thing- 

 valla (a place of great note in Icelandic history), which is situated 

 upon an ancient lava-current and is at a considerable distance from 

 the sea, there is rather an extensive district of cavernous lava full 



* Read before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 10th June 1847. 



