NATURALISED AND ACCLIMATISED PLANTS IN 

 VARIOUS PARTS OF THE WORLD. 



By JOSEPH LAUTERER, M.D. 



(Read before the lioijal Societt/ of Queensland, 25th Jicne, 1903. 



Acclimatisation in the widest sense, as intended artificial intro- 

 duction, and as unintended (natural or occasional) immigration 

 of organisms, has very different results. The self-acclimatising 

 power of plants and animals is also very different. There are 

 plants occurring only in an area of a hundred square miles. 

 Mr. F. M. Bailey, discovered a new sassafras tree on the Blackall 

 Ranges, named by him Cinnamomuru Oliveri, which is pro- 

 bably confined to an exceedingly small district. Other plants 

 are found from pole to pole all round the globe. The vegetation 

 of lakes and rivers, in and upon the water and on the shores, is 

 marvellously uniform on the whole earth. The same genera, 

 and even the identical species of aquatic plants, were seen by me 

 in the Wakatipu of New Zealand, the Chuzenji and Biwa in 

 Japan, the Chapala in Mexico, and the Titicaca in Peru. The 

 same waterlilies {Ni/mphaea), bladderworts [Utricidaria), frogbits 

 [Hiidrocharis), J'allisnerias, pondweeds (Potamogeton), quilworts 

 {Isoetes), watermilfoils {Mi/riophylluiu) hornworts [O eratophijl- 

 lum), duckweeds [Lemna), Naias and pilworts {Pilulnria), are 

 growing there in the water ; plants which I gathered thirty years 

 ago in the Malar lake in Sweden, and in the post-tertiary glacier 

 lakes of Switzerland and the Black Forest. An European 

 who comes to Australia and finds himself surrounded by a flora 

 altogether different from what he has been accustomed to, is 

 surprised in the highest degree, to find on the sources of the Mac- 

 quarie River, in lonely places scarcely trodden before by a 



