LAND PLANTS COLLECTED BY THE 

 ALLAN HANCOCK ATLANTIC EXPEDITION OF 1939 



HOWARD SCOTT GENTRY 



In 1939 the cruiser, Velcro III, of the Allan Hancock Foundation 

 voyaged from Panama to Trinidad and returned. Aboard was a staff of 

 natural history scientists and technicians. The party traveled off the 

 Venezuelan coast and visited several islands of the Dutch West Indies and 

 the British West Indies. They left Panama on the seventh of April and 

 were back at Barro Colorado in the Panama Canal Zone on May first. 

 The exact course and further details of this voyage are given in Garth's 

 account (1945). Most of the staff were concerned with marine biology 

 and dredgings were made at likely places near the lands. Mr. Francis H. 

 Elmore accompanied the expedition to collect land plants and went ashore 

 whenever opportunity afforded. He was sometimes accompanied by Dr. 

 W. R. Taylor, phycologist, and Elmore in his notes attributes some of the 

 land plant collections to Taylor. All collections, however, are cited below 

 under Elmore's collection numbers. Although the trip was made during 

 the diy season, collectable material of 120 south Caribbean plants was 

 obtained. 



The most notable locality visited was Cubagua Island, which lies off 

 the Venezuelan coast about six miles inward from the larger island of 

 Margarita. The flora of Margarita and one of its smaller companion 

 islands, Coche, was reported by Johnston (1909). So far as I can deter- 

 mine, Elmore was the first to collect on Cubagua. Urban (1902) does 

 not list the island among those visited by collectors. Later works, as those 

 of Boldingh (1913, 1914), Trelease (1913), Sandwith (1938), and 

 Pulle (1932-39), and numerous authors of many papers including plants 

 of the region, all fail to report any collections from Cubagua Island. 

 Although it is possible that I have overlooked some citations of plants 

 from Cubagua Island, I regard the enumerated 15 plants below as the 

 first to have been collected on Cubagua. 



Cubagua is a small island about 5 miles long, 2^^ miles wide, and 200 

 feet high. Johnston refers to it as a desert island, like Coche. Of Coche he 

 wrote, (1. c. pp. 288, 289). "The island of Coche is a typical desert island 

 and, so far as reported, had never been visited by a botanist. . . . No mention 

 of rain on the island has been made because the existence of any at any 

 time was not apparent. The natives claimed there never was any. As a 

 matter of fact at the time of this visit there was a slight mist in the after- 



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