Observations on the flora of central Chile 



George Tracy Hastings 



1 



From the fall of 1900 until the spring of 1903 the author 

 held the position of teacher of sciences In the Instituto Ingles, an 

 English school in Santiago, Chile. Short holidays during the 

 school year and the long vacation from Christmas to the first of 

 March gave opportunities for collecting trips about the city and to 

 the mountains to the east. In these trips the small lakes in the 

 neighborhood of Santiago Avere visited and the mountains ascended 

 to a height of twelve thousand feet. The following observations 

 give the results oi these trips. 



Midway between the damp forests of the south and the deserts 

 of the north, central Chile has a flora related to that of both, yet 

 differing from each. From sea-level to the limit of shrubby 

 growth on the mountains, thorny bushes are the characteristic 

 plants. Most plants of the region show xerophytic modifications, 

 for no rain falls from the first of September till the following June. 

 By October the ground is fairly dry over the hills and higher land. 

 By late November the green of winter and early spring is every- 

 where replaced by the brown of dry vegetation. The rapid rivers 

 have cut deep valleys through the mountains and across the central 

 plain, so that naturally mesophytic areas are found only in very 

 narrow belts along the streams or in small mountain marshes. 

 An extensive irrigating system has modified these natural con- 

 ditions in the central plain to a considerable extent. 



About Santiago the floral regions may be determined largely 

 by elevation. Thus, there is the central plain with an eleva- 

 tion varying from one thousand to fifteen hundred feet ; the hills 

 from fifteen hundred feet to the limit of tree-growth at from five to 

 eight thousand feet, the limit being higher in the interior than in 

 the outer ranges of mountains ; above this comes the high moun- 

 tain flora extending to the region of perpetual snow. 



In the first region the typical plant is the thorn-bush {espino). 

 Acacia Cavenin, a shrub usually under ten feet in height, but some- 



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