Botanical Notices from Spain, 189 



XXI. — Botanical Notices from Spain. By Moritz Willkomm*. 

 [Continued from p. 122.] 



No. VI. Granada, November 4th, 1844. 



On the 12th of September I quitted the village of Guejar, and on the 

 following day, after traversing a very difficult and somevi^hat danger- 

 ous path over the Puerto de Vacares, I reached the south side of the 

 Sierra Nevada, where I pitched my quarters in the village of Tre- 

 velez, lying at an elevation of about 6000 feet, the first and highest 

 inhabited place of the Alpuj arras. This village lies immediately at 

 the base of the Mulahacen, in a very rocky valley, watered by the 

 wild river of the Trevelez, which runs parallel to the principal chain 

 of the Sierra, and divides this from the second, much lower and very 

 sterile chain, the Sierra de Contraviesa. Notwithstanding the great 

 height at which this village lies, it is surrounded with the most lux- 

 uriant chestnut- and nut-trees, and rye and barley are even grown 

 in the alpine region ; the vine however will no longer flourish here. 

 This very circumstance shows that the position of the region is very 

 different from that of the northern declivity, and moreover its limits 

 are not so sharply marked as on the opposite side. 



The southern declivity of the Sierra Nevada presents a perfectly 

 different appearance from that of the northern declivity. Whilst 

 the summits of the principal chain terminate abruptly toward the 

 north, and form immense and frequently inaccessible rocks, these 

 toward the south pass into long, parallel, gradually descending 

 coombes, which on the whole leave but very little undulating country 

 between them. Between these mountain coombes, at a height of 

 from 8000 to 10,000 feet, there lie a number of tarns or small moun- 

 tain lakes as clear as crystal, from which innumerable rivulets issue 

 into the valleys of Trevelez, the Rio Toqueira and Rio Grande. 1 

 have myself seen and visited, between the Cerro Caballo and the 

 Puerto del Lobo, — apparently the two terminations of the mountain 

 range, — fourteen lakes on the south side ; but their shores present 

 no remarkable vegetation ; indeed, in general the vegetation of the 

 whole southern declivity appears to be much less rich than that of 

 the northern, which may be partly explained by the formation of 

 this side, and partly by its exposure to the south. One of the most 

 characteristic plants of the south side of the Sierra Nevada is the 

 Arenaria pungens, Clem., which is found throughout the whole alpine 

 and snow region, growing from the valleys up to the mountain re- 

 gion, and forms the flora of the snow region and the highest sum- 

 mits, together with A. tetraquetra, Artemisia granatensis, Ptilotri- 

 chum spinosum, Eryngium glaciate, E, Bourgati, Gouan., Sideritis 

 scordioides, var. vestita, Boiss., Thymus angustifolius. P., and Ten- 

 crium Polium, y. aureum. The shores of these lakes are for the most 

 part so thickly covered with Plantago nivalis , Boiss., that from a 



* Translated from the Botanische Zeitung, May 2, 1845. 



