BOTANIZING WITH THE OKINAWANS — WALKER 367 



labors is due the success of this trip. We were all working together 

 for a common end, the advancement of botany in the Ryukyu Islands. 

 Headquarters for our operations and adequate space for our drying 

 apparatus were generously provided by the Okinawan Government's 

 agricultural experiment station in Naha, the Yogi Agricultural 

 Institute. 



Dr. Floyd Werner, of the University of Vermont, the first entomol- 

 ogist with the SIRI program, was also located here with his Okinawan 

 associates (pi. 8, upper). We coordinated our operations and traveled 

 together as a collecting unit, using the same jeep. It may well be 

 imagined that there was seldom any extra space and that frequently 

 considerable finagling was necessary to see that the MP's would not 

 find more than the legal five persons in our vehicle. Fortunately they 

 would not have counted the gear. In spite of Werner's and my almost 

 complete lack of knowledge of Japanese and the Okinawans' lack of 

 English, except for Mr. Tawada who knew enough, plans were made 

 and operations carried out remarkably smoothly. When in doubt 

 as to what was going on, a common enough circumstance, we left our- 

 selves in the hands of our Okinawans — and all went well. 



At first we were limited to short trips in daily requisitioned jeeps, 

 and so we became acquainted with the highly altered vegetation of 

 war-devastated southern Okinawa. But such plants are integral 

 parts of any flora; indeed, they are often of more economic signifi- 

 cance than the more remote native plant associations, which to the 

 botanists are admittedly much more interesting. When, on July 4, 

 the Army at some sacrifice finally assigned a jeep to us for unlimited 

 expeditions, we established headquarters in Nago for a week of botan- 

 izing in the forested mountains and remote parts of the island. Speci- 

 mens were sent daily by local buses to attendants at Yogi who kept 

 the plant driers going day and night. The traditional method of 

 drying specimens by absorbing their moisture content by means of 

 blotters or felt driers is quite impossible where high humidity pre- 

 vails as in Okinawa. Instead, bundles consisting of specimens alter- 

 nating with corrugated cardboard or corrugated aluminum sheets 

 were strapped together and suspended vertically over Japanese-made 

 kerosene lanterns. Heat from the lanterns rose through the corru- 

 gations, furnishing enough gentle hot air to dry the specimens in one 

 to several days. 



Through July and early August field trips of a week or less alter- 

 nated with returns to base to recuperate and to care for the specimens 

 collected. 4 We made trips to the tops of several of the higher moun- 

 tains, sometimes climbing up the narrow, slippery trails used by wood 

 cutters in carrying out on their shoulders selected logs of the more 



*For details of places botanized, see my paper listed at end of text, reference 12. 



