300 eyth6r einarsson 



species or almost 25 per cent are eastern and not found in America. He 

 states further that 74 Icelandic species, or 17 per cent of the flora, are not 

 found in the British Isles, whereas 184 species, or ca. 42 per cent are not found 

 in Greenland. 



Love and Love (1956) set the total number of spermatophyte species in 

 Iceland at 540, of which 387 are regarded as being definitely indigenous, the 

 rest alien. They divide the indigenous species into five groups, or elements: To 

 the Circumpolar element, comprising all species with a Circumpolar area of 

 distribution and some species with an almost Circumpolar area of distribution 

 but with a gap in their distribution in the Pacific region, belong 148 Icelandic 

 spermatophytes. The majority of these Circumpolar plants do not show any 

 variation from the representatives of these species in other countries. Some of 

 them, however, show a closer relationship to the same species in Scandinavia 

 than elsewhere, whereas others are more closely related to the populations in 

 the British Isles. Still others are represented in Iceland by the same races as 

 in Greenland and differ somewhat from the European ones. 



The second element is the bis- Atlantic, comprising species met with on both 

 sides of the Atlantic, but not reaching very far inland in continental Eurasia 

 or North America. It includes 1 13 Icelandic species. Some of these are found 

 mainly west of Iceland, while others have their main area east of Iceland. The 

 third element is the eastern one, comprising those species which have a 

 European or Eurasiatic distribution; some of them however, are also found 

 in western North America. There are 95 Icelandic spermatophytes in this 

 element. Some of them show strong affinities to Scandinavian specimens 

 of these species, but still others bear more hkeness to British specimens. 



The fourth element is the western one, comprising species with their main 

 distributional area west of Iceland. The authors, Love and Love (1956) point 

 out, that the majority of the 14 species which they classify as western, are 

 probably not very old in Iceland, and some of them probably are the most 

 recent, prehistoric invaders of the flora. Some of these 14 taxa are varieties 

 or subspecies of wider distributed species. Finally, regarding the 17 taxa 

 belonging to the endemic element, they are also for the most part races of 

 species known from other regions, Circumpolar or European as, for example, 

 Papaver, or belonging to genera reproducing by apomixis or autogamy, as 

 Alchemilla and Euphrasia. The only exception is AlchemiUa faeroeensis, an 

 endemic species growing in eastern Iceland and the Faeroes. 



The great majority of the Icelandic "species" belonging to Hieracium 

 are endemic (Oskarsson, 1955), but for the most part they show a close 

 relationship to Scandinavian, Faeroese, or British "species". 



According to my own opinion, the Icelandic vascular plant species number 

 ca. 440, including naturalized, introduced species, but 116 "species" of 

 Taraxacum and ca. 180 "species" o^ Hieracium excluded. 



About 10 of these 440 species are somewhat doubtful; they have only been 



