BOTANIZING WITH THE OKINAWANS — WALKER 375 



REVIEW OF THE VEGETATION 



Floristically, Okinawa Island is divisible into the southern war- 

 disturbed and the northern undisturbed parts. The southern end, 

 especially below the narrowest neck of the island, has an unkempt, bar- 

 ren appearance due in the first place to the paucity of trees, the bar- 

 renness seemingly only augmented by the few scattered remains of 

 the prewar trees. Those that the Japanese army did not use in build- 

 ing defenses, the Americans blew down to eliminate snipers. En- 

 couraging headway, however, has been made in planting trees, and 

 the Saion Forest Nursery gives much promise of a better woody vege- 

 tation in the near future. In the second place, the barrenness is aug- 

 mented by the unkempt aspect of the abundant cover of tall, coarse 

 bunch-grass, mostly Miscanthus floridulus. In the fall, however, this 

 grass adds a silvery sheen to the landscape, for then it bears abundant 

 large white plumes on stalks higher than one's head (pi. 8, lower). 

 Other common coarse grasses are cogon grass, Imperata cylindrica 

 var. major, and Saccharum spontaneum, 1 also with whitish inflores- 

 cences. The abundant thick-stemmed stiff-leaved, dark-green, palm- 

 like cycads, Cycas revoluta, (pi. 7, lower) , are characteristic features of 

 the landscape, growing on the shores, hills, limestone knobs, and edges 

 of cultivated fields. Where the battle eddied around a spot, there 

 might remain characteristic open stands of the Luchu Island 

 pine (pi. 7) with intermingling cyads and coarse grasses. Cur- 

 rently many of these pines are dying from the depredations of an in- 

 sect pest. The rough limestone knobs and cliffs that jut out here and 

 there are usually clothed in shrubs and scraggly trees. Among them 

 especially are various species of banyan, the most common being Ficus 

 retusa, which can be anything from an almost climbing vine or at least 

 a clinging shrub on the bare face of a rock to a broad and venerable tree 

 with huge spreading branches hoary with hanging aerial roots (pi. 6, 

 upper) . The appearance of barrenness is further augmented by the 

 American installations built on great bulldozed and leveled areas, once 

 hills and valleys covered with grass, trees, or cultivated fields. Oki- 

 nawan villages are nearly always hidden in abundant verdure, partly 

 for the comforting shade, partly for typhoon protection, and perhaps 

 partly because the principle of laissez-faire lets nature make them so. 

 It is too soon to predict with confidence what nature will do to the 

 American installations, but if the wet weed field I saw green with new 

 verdure three weeks after it was bulldozed into barrenness is any indi- 

 cation, perhaps even southern Okinawa will be green again through- 

 out. Already one sees along the roads and among the houses many 

 planted feathery casuarinas (Casuarina equisetifolia) and acacias 

 (Acacia confusa) and other introduced ornamental trees. 



T Improperly called kunal grass In American wartime publications. 

 236639—53 25 



