FLORA AND FAUNA ON THE NORTH COAST 



against a too vigorous drying-up by the wind. Many varieties were only dis- 

 covered by VVulfF during the month of July, as they had been hidden by the 

 snow until then. In his diaries he repeatedly expresses his surprise at rinding 

 that first one and then another of the varieties are missing ; but later on 

 the error is corrected : " It is here after all, but it was covered by the snow." 



As already mentioned, all the various species are perennial, this being in 

 accordance with the short period of vegetation. Yet another fact must be 

 mentioned in this connection : several Arctic plants do not get time for a 

 yearly ripening of their fruit. This may be due to an unusually early arrival 

 of autumn, with frost, or to a late spring, so that the plants become bare of 

 snow very late. Under these circumstances annual plants would soon have to 

 give up ; but the perennial plants, on the other hand, can wait for a favourable 

 summer. There are Arctic plants which only occasionally reach the state of 

 fruition, being limited during other years to a mere state of vegetation. 



The Arctic flowers have often been praised for their size and their clear 

 colours, and considering their hard conditions of life one cannot help wonder- 

 ing that so much beauty can be developed ; but nevertheless they are very 

 modest in comparison with the flowers of our homely plants. It is the deso- 

 late surroundings which make the Arctic flowers so conspicuous. 



The pollination of the flowers and the subsequent fertilization is, of course, 

 the prelude to fructification. Pollination takes place either by the aid of the 

 wind, the pollen being carried along through the air, when it is a matter of 

 chance whether or no it will alight on a flower, or by the aid of the insects ; 

 thus it is also in high Arctic countries. In the short summer, flies, humble- 

 bees and multi-coloured butterflies flit from flower to flower in search of 

 honey and pollen, and these simultaneously undertake the pollination. The 

 more open flowers, like the poppy and the anemone, attract the flies, whilst 

 the butterflies lower their long probosces into the nectary of the silene, the 

 red saxifrage, and the Arctic stock or night-smelling rocket, a rare plant found 

 in several places on the north coast of Greenland. This latter possesses a 

 strong odour, a very uncommon quality among Arctic plants. White or 

 yellow are the most frequent colours of flowers, but red in various shades is also 

 to be found ; blue, on the contrary, is very rare in the Arctic regions, and no 

 flower found on the north coast of Greenland is of this colour. 



So far we have only considered the flowering plants ; but besides these a 

 considerable number of mosses and lichens exist. The lichens grow especially 

 on the naked rock, which in many places they adorn with their vivid white, 

 yellow, and reddish colours, whilst the mosses mostly grow on the soil among 

 the flowering plants. 



Also a few fungi are to be found on the north coast. Wulff mentions small 

 yellowish-brown toadstools and white puff-balls. The latter are edible ; he 

 mentions a really good dish made from the product of the land : musk-ox soup 

 with brent-goose bones and a couple of handfuls of chopped puff-balls. 



I shall not go deeply into the matter of the way in which the various 

 plants combine into a plant society. I will merely mention that vegetation is 

 not evenly distributed. For the most part the soil is almost bare, with single 

 or scattered plants ; but in the more fertile places — for instance, where the 

 excrements of the animals have fertilized the soil — the plants occasionally 

 form an entirely connected cover; but these spots are not extensive. In the 

 bogs one also occasionally meets with a rather dense growth of plants, mostly 

 mosses and grass. 



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