A PHKTJMINARY LIST OF MALDIVE PLANTS. b 



this land-form was found in considerable abundance, no examples 

 approaching Dr. Tiselius's specimens, No. 44, d., e., and/., were to 

 be seen. 



I have to thank Mr. Morgan once more for the great pains he 

 has taken in drawing his two accurate plates of this plant. The 

 limited space of an 8vo plate did not admit the insertion of the 

 characteristic involute stem-leaves ; a drawing was prepared in 

 which these were fully shown, but we thought it better to figure the 

 autumnal barren shoot and the laud-form in the second plate, 

 especially as the involute leaves may easily be understood from the 

 description. 



Tab. 353 represents a flowering branch. Tab. 854, fig. 1, the 

 land-form ; and fig. 2, a barren autumnal shoot. 



A PRELIMINARY LIST OF MALDIVE PLANTS. 

 By Henry Trimen, M.B., F.R.S. 



Since the year 1888, I have had in my possession a small 

 collection of plants collected on Male I. by Capt. A. C. Christopher, 

 A.D.C. to Sir A. Gordon (now Lord Staumore, at that time Governor 

 of Ceylon), who visited the Maldives in a ship of war. I have 

 always hoped to be able to add to it by personal investigation on 

 the spot, but this now seems unlikely. A few species were added 

 by some scraps picked up by Mr. Haly, Director of the Colombo 

 Museum, in 1892 ; but, so far as I know, no collector with any 

 botanical knowledge has visited the Archipelago, nor are there any 

 specimens from it in our London herbariums. Also, with the ex- 

 ception of a few notices of some plants cultivated in tbe islands, 

 I believe nothing has been published on their vegetation. In- 

 complete and meagre as it is, I therefore think it may be worth 

 while to put on record the following list, as embodying what is 

 known up to the j)resent on the subject. 



A full general account of the Maldive group will be found in the 

 Report of Mr. H. C P. Bell, of the Ceylon Civil Service, who visited 

 Male in 1879, in the official Ceylon '* Sessional Papers" for 1881 

 (but not published till 1883). Unfortunately he did not collect 

 plants, but he brought back a few scraps which were examined by 

 the late Mr. W. Ferguson, F.L.S., of Colombo, who was, however, 

 only able to identify two or three of them. 



The Maldives are coral islands, and form a large archipelago 

 extending from 7° 6' N. lat. to a little south of the equator, 0° 42' 

 S. lat. There are more than twenty atols in all, the most northerly 

 being 350 miles from Cape Comorin, in India, and 400 from the 

 nearest point of the Ceylon coast. There are said to be at least 

 1200 islands, but many are very small. The principal island, con- 

 taining Male, the capital, is one mile long by three-quarters of a 

 mile broad, and I believe that it is on this alone that any plants 

 have been collected. The inhabitants, probably originally of the 



B 2 



