ARCTIC REGIONS 71 



interesting fact that annuals are very rare ; only four 

 or five flowering plants complete their life-cycle in 

 one season. In the Swiss Alps the percentage of 

 annuals falls as higher altitudes are reached. 



While it is true that many of the Greenland 

 plants exhibit a characteristic and peculiar habit 

 of growth as well as certain external characters and 

 structural features in their foliage and stems that 

 are usually considered to be adaptations to rigorous 

 climatic conditions, others are in no visible respect 

 different from plants that flourish in a warmer and 

 much more favourable environment. The power 

 to endure hardship probably resides in some 

 quality of constitution, something that is funda- 

 mental in the composition of their ' physical basis 

 of life,' the living protoplasm. 



The high northern distribution and the abund- 

 ance of flowering plants in Arctic regions afford a 

 striking contrast to the conditions in correspond- 

 ing latitudes in the southern hemisphere. The 

 North Pole is surrounded by the Polar Sea bounded 

 by a ring of circumpolar lands; the South Pole is 

 situated on a vast continent separated from the 

 nearest land masses by the turbulent southern 

 ocean with scattered archipelagoes and solitary 

 islands, some of which are of comparatively recent 

 origin while others may be vestiges of submerged 

 connecting bridges. Not a single flowering plant 

 has been discovered within the Antarctic Circle. 

 The most southerly representative of the flowering 

 plants, over four hundred of which occur in Green- 

 land, is a grass (Deschampia antarctica) which was 



