Botanical Notices from Spain. 189 
XXI.— Botanical Notices from Spain. By Moritz WiLLKomnM*. 
[Continued from p. 122.] 
No. VI. Granapa, November 4th, 1844. 
On the 12th of September I quitted the village of Guejar, and on the 
following day, after traversing a very difficult and somewhat danger- 
ous path over the Puerto de Vacares, | reached the south side of the 
Sierra Nevada, where I pitched my quarters in the village of Tre- 
velez, lying at an elevation of about 6000 feet, the first-and highest 
inhabited place of the Alpujarras. ‘This village lies immediately at 
the base of the Mulahacen, in a very rocky valley, watered by the 
wild river of the Trevelez, which runs parallel to the principal chain 
of the Sierra, and divides this from the second, much lower and very 
sterile chain, the Sierra de Contraviesa. Notwithstanding the great 
height at which this village lies, it is surrounded with the most lux- 
uriant chestnut- and nut-trees, and rye and barley are even grown 
in the alpine region ; the vine however will no longer flourish here. 
This very circumstance shows that the position of the region is very 
different from that of the northern declivity, and moreover its limits 
are not so sharply marked as on the opposite side. 
The southern declivity of the Sierra Nevada presents a perfectly 
different appearance from that of the northern declivity. Whilst 
the summits of the principal chain terminate abruptly toward the 
north, and form immense and frequently inaccessible rocks, these 
toward the south pass into long, parallel, gradually descending 
coombes, which on the whole leave but very little undulating country 
between them. Between these mountain coombes, at a height of 
from 8000 to 10,000 feet, there lie a number of tarns or small moun- 
tain lakes as clear as crystal, from which innumerable rivulets issue 
into the valleys of Trevelez, the Rio Toqueira and Rio Grande. I 
have myself seen and visited, between the Cerro Caballo and the 
Puerto del Lobo,—apparently the two terminations of the mountain 
range,—fourteen lakes on the south side; but their shores present 
no remarkable vegetation ; indeed, in general the vegetation of the 
whole southern declivity appears to be much less rich than that of 
the northern, which may be partly explained by the formation of 
this side, and partly by its exposure to the south. One of the most 
characteristic plants of the south side of the Sierra Nevada is the 
Arenaria pungens, Clem., which is found throughout the whole alpine 
and snow region, growing from the valleys up to the mountain re- 
gion, and forms the flora of the snow region and the highest sum- 
mits, together with A. tetraquetra, Artemisia granatensis, Ptilotri- 
chum spinosum, Eryngium glaciale, E. Bourgati, Gouan., Sideritis 
scordioides, var. vestita, Boiss., Thymus angustifolius, P., and Teu- 
crium Polium, y.aureum. The shores of these lakes are for the most 
part so thickly covered with Plantago nivalis, Boiss., that from a 
* Translated from the Botanische Zeitung, May 2, 1845. 
