368 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1952 



valuable species. Sometimes we pushed our way along abandoned 

 and overgrown trails, always keeping a wary lookout for new plants 

 and the lurking "habu," the poisonous snake for which this island 

 is too often maligned. Outside of a dead one, crushed by Amano's 

 heavy heel before I came puffing up, and a less poisonous "hemihabu" 

 seen on one of the southern islands, I saw none of these reptiles. I 

 rather suspect, however, that more than one lay quietly where they 

 were. The Okinawans at least were always alert to this danger. 



One of the best collections was made in the jungle called Taminato- 

 ugan (pi. 6, upper) . This area, running up the side of a mountain to a 

 limestone precipice, was a protected religious shrine and was left un- 

 touched by the wood cutters and thus showed the native flora better 

 than most areas. We collected freely, but I doubt if our scientific col- 

 lecting was regarded as any transgression of its sanctity. Never to be 

 forgotten was the trip to another shrine area, Manzamo or Banzamo, 

 which means "a million people sit down," referring to the open, park- 

 like nature of this seaside cliff summit and its open grove of Luchu 

 Island pines. Here there is a stone monument to an Okinawan poetess, 

 Onna Nabe, bearing her poem commemorating the visit in ancient 

 times of the Shuri King to this revered spot : 



Naini nu Kwin tumari (Die away the sea ; 



Kaji nu Kwin timari Be quiet the wind ; 



Shuyui Tin-janashi I would welcome and bow 



Myunshi wugama To the Shuri King.) 



But of more significance to a botanist was Manzamo as the original 

 and only known home, technically called the type locality, of a new 

 species of Portulaca. On the summit of an almost barren, spray- 

 dashed limestone cliff, Tawada in 1949 had discovered a plant he 

 thought represented a new species and had sent specimens to me, 

 along with a drawing. It was technically described by me as Portu- 

 laca okinawensis, accompanied by Tawada's illustration, in April 1951 

 in a Washington scientific journal (14), the first botannical paper 

 jointly authored by an Okinawan and an American. On this visit 

 we supplemented the original collection with more specimens and 

 photographed in color the diminutive plant and its sweeping outlook 

 over the East China Sea. 



On this same cliff were also collected herbarium specimens and 

 viable seeds of Aster asa-grayi. This native Ryukyu aster was origi- 

 nally named Galimeris ciliata by the famous American botanist 

 Asa Gray, from collections made in "Osumi" 5 in the notrhern Eyukyus 

 by a botanist with the United States North Pacific Exploring Expedi- 



5 The precise locality is not clear. We may assume Gray's designation of Osumi refers 

 to some island in the Osumi Gunto. 



