A NOTE ON THE FLORA OF KOLGUEV 



A glance at the remarks on the climate of this island will show how 

 very severe the conditions are under which plant-life there exists. As 

 a consequence of the frosts of June, the frequent cold-driving mists, 

 the prevalence of northerly gales, and the exposed character of the 

 country, plants, in a majority of instances, tend to a dwarfed condition 

 and an abnormal habit of growth. Thus we find the common yarrow 

 (Achillea millefolium) reduced to a plant some three inches high and 

 tomentose. The woolly willow (Salix latiata), which on the mainland, 

 not ten miles from the sea, is as high as a man, grows nowhere on 

 Kolguev higher than the knee, and only reaches that height in the 

 most favourable spots. 



Plants, again, are exceedingly late in flowering and in ripening fruit. 

 We left the twin-flowered violet ( Viola biflora) in full flower at Tromso 

 on June n. Yet on Kolguev it had only just come into bloom on 

 August 2. The cloudberry {Rubus chamcemorus) was not generally 

 ripe with us till August 25. Yet the Russians told me that these 

 berries were ' over ' on the mainland when they left the Petchora on 

 August 11. We saw no fruit of R. arcticus, and the Samoyeds all 

 agreed in saying that it bore none on Kolguev. 



Of the ninety-five flowering plants found by myself on Kolguev, 

 some sixty-three are recorded as British. But of these, as one would 

 have expected, many are in Britain either rare or exceedingly local. 

 Thus Arabis Alpina has only been recorded from Skye; 1 Draba 

 rupestris is ' rare on some of the higher mountain summits of Scotland 

 and north-west Ireland.' 2 



Of the plants which are not British some have nevertheless a wide 

 palasarctic and some a circumpolar range. To the former class belong, 



1 H. C. Hart., fou m. of Bot., 1887. - Bentham and Hooker. 



