

Historical survey of the botanical investigations 



on the Island of Disko. 



O WING to the easy access to the harbour of Godhavn and also on ac- 

 count of the importance of this settlement as the head-quarters of 

 the Royal Inspector of Danish North Greenland, Disko has become the 

 most frequently visited locality of Greenland. Besides the Danish tra- 

 vellers, nearly all North-Polar Expeditions through Davis Strait have 

 anchored here and piants have been collected. With few exceptions 

 however, only the vicinity of the settlement has been studied. 



In the following I shall endeavour shortly to characterize the im- 

 portance of each contribution or, in other words to give the history 

 of our knowledge of the higher piants on Disko, however leaving aside 

 the scanty contributions to the flora of Greenland from the 18th Cen- 

 tury, as surely very few of them have been brought home from that 

 island. 



During his journeys in 1806 — 13 for the Danish Government, 

 the famous mineralogist C. L. Giesecke spent much time in the ex- 

 ploring of Disko, where he, at difYerent times, visited the Disko-Fjord, 

 the South Coast, parts of the Vaj gat and the North Coast. He also 

 incidentally collected piants, and gave in his article ))Greenland«, in 

 Brewsters »The Edinburgh Encyclopædia 1816« a list of piants observed 

 in Greenland, but without any mention of special localities. His 

 diary, of which the main parts were published in 1878 by Johnstrup, 

 also contains numerous notices of piants collected or observed. But 

 Giesecke's identifications are only partially to be relied upon, and 

 Lange did not revise the collection of Giesecke till 1887 (see below). 



The richest collections of piants ever brought home from West 

 Greenland by one collector, were made by Jens Vahl, who, sent by our 

 Government, spent 8 years in Greenland and who, during the years 

 1833 — 36 visited several times the neighbourhood of Godhavn. Un- 

 fortunately this able and thoroughly scientifically trained botanist 



