﻿Cook : Flora of the Canary Islands 353 



Not infrequently three or four years pass without rainfall on 

 these arid shores, and one must needs have heroic enthusiasm to 

 brave the heat and drought of the desert climate in the search for 

 botanical novelties. On Lanzarote there are two insignificant, 

 almost inaccessible springs. Fuerteventura is somewhat better 

 provided and, " when the waters of heaven remember its inhabit- 

 ants," is said to be " of wonderful fertility" — in a wet year pro- 

 ducing more wheat than all the other islands together and of a 

 very fine quality. Its vegetation is described as "exceedingly 

 varied and of the greatest interest to the botanist" — "a miniature 



reproduction of the parts of northern, desert Africa." Lanzarote 

 has been more torn by volcanic action than any of the other islands, 

 and the character of the plants is distinctively Saharan. In one 

 group of hills the soil is still so heated that wood will-burn in the 

 crevices. These two islands together have 32 species which are 

 either confined to them or found only rarely on the other islands. 

 Webb and Berthelot enumerate 165 species from Lanzarote, 43 

 from Fuerteventura. They spent only seven weeks on the former 

 and- a very few days on the latter and were in neither at the most 

 favorable times of the year. Much might be expected from a 

 thorough tour of their hills and valleys. 



Canary and Tenerife, the two central and largest islands of the 

 archipelago, are the ones to which our own study was confined. 

 They have many features in common, rocky coasts reaching back 

 mto bleak, volcanic wastes and fertile inland cut into by numberless 

 valleys and gorges and here and there boasting a wonderful piece 

 of dense, luxuriant woods which the conquerors in some myste- 

 rious way overlooked in their wholesale destruction of the once 

 all-dominating forests. There are distinctly marked floral regions 

 and each is characterized by some remarkable development of 

 Plant life. 



Over the barren coast wastes are scattered clumps of fleshy 

 Plants, prominent among them Euphorbia balsamifcra. Its fruti- 

 c °se stems reach a height of four or five feet, branch copiously, 

 forming a circular crown, and bear rosettes of leaves at the apices 

 of the ramifications. The shrubby Euphorbia aphylla also abounds 

 1,1 the maritime regions. Among the cylindrical branches of both 

 of these species wind the filiform stems of the curious Linaria 



