1. INTRODUCTION. 



The Flora of West Greenland, as is well-known, has not been 

 thoroughly investigated everywhere to the same degree. The 

 country is so large in extent, the means of communication so pri- 

 mitive and expensive, and the summer so extremely short that even 

 these circumstances would suffice to make a thorough investigation 

 difficult. Moreover, the places most easy of access — the settlements 

 — are usually not situated in those districts which are the most 

 interesting from a botanical point of view, as their position was not 

 fixed as a result of consideration of the vegetation. 



Disco Island and its surroundings in the northerly half of the 

 west coast have been fairly thoroughly investigated. The south coast 

 of the island has been visited by almost all the botanists who have 

 worked in Greenland; the other coasts have been investigated occa- 

 sionally, but yet species are constantly being found which have 

 previously been overlooked. The coast of the mainland of Green- 

 land from south of Jakobshavn to north of Ritenbenk has been, as 

 yet, very insufficiently investigated. On the other hand, the sur- 

 roundings of the settlement of Umanq have been well investigated, 

 even as far inwards as to the inland ice, in the first instance, by 

 J. Vahl and lately by Vanhoffen. From the near surroundings of 

 the settlements of Prøven and of Upernavik some scattered investi- 

 gations are to hand, made by ditferent members of Danish, English 

 and American expeditions (J. Vahl, Th. Holm, H. C. Hart, Dickie, 

 Tailor and the Peary expeditions). C. Ryder has collected a con- 

 siderable number of plants from about 72° N. lal. to the boundary 

 of the Danish territory; these plants have been included in the papers 

 by Lange and Rosenvinge cited in the following pages (see list of 

 literature). The large peninsula of Svartenhuk and the ijords round 

 it, and the northern district of Umanaq have scarcely been investigated 

 at all. Only from the head of Uvkusiqssat Fjord Dr. K. J.V. Steenstrup 

 has collected a small number of the most common plants (see Lange, 



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