THE VEGETATION OF EASTER ISLAN'D 4gi 



U'vu/s. 



Easter Island is a windy but not a stormy place; calm days are rare. 

 The SE trade winds are more constant during the summer than during the 

 winter, when VV and N winds are quite as common or even more frequent. 



Regional obscrvaiioiis. 



During the }'ear 7" 191 1 — "^^U 1912 temperatures were taken in Malaveri 

 and on the north rim of Rano Kao, elevation c. 300 m. The annual march is 

 the same, the average i°.7 lower in the upper station. The rainfall is of greater 

 interest. There was a third ain gauge on Otu, about 350 m above sea level. 

 The precipitation in Mataveri, alt. 30 m, was 1268.7, on Rano Kao, c. 270 m 

 above Mataveri, 1235.8 and on Otii, only about 50 m higher than Rano Kao, 

 2056.9 mm. One expects a greater rainfall in the mountains than in the low 

 land, and this relation holds good when we compare Mataveri with Otu, but 

 the figure for Rano Kao is surprisingly low. Possibly the south half of the 

 crater rim, which falls precipitously into the sea, catches some of the rain 

 coming from SW — SE. Otu is exposed toward all quarters. 



The northwest portion of the island (Maunga Terevaka and Rano Aroi) 

 is often shrouded in a cap of clouds and probably receives a still greater 

 amount of moisture. 



General aspect of the vegetation. 



Indigenous trees and shrubs are almost wanting. A scanty growth of 

 small trees is observed inside Rano Kao, and numbers of Bvoussonetia papy- 

 rifcra were reported from the interior of the island by FuENTES (Resena bo- 

 tanica sobre la Isla de Pascua: Inst. Centr. Meteor, y Geofis. de Chile, No. 4, 

 191 3), but this species is most likely an early native introduction. Besides, 

 some trees are said to grow below the cliffs of the eastern headland, but I do 

 not know what kind they are. RoGGEVEEN, the discoverer of the island in 1722, 

 described it as barren, and Cook's party found it almost destitute of wood. 

 Native tradition tells that the first trees were brought by the first immigrants. 

 This may well be true of some species, but Sophora toroniiro is endemic and 

 easily distinguished from other members of the section Edwardsia, and there 

 is no Edwardsia in Melanesia or in the part of Polynesia from where the Easter 

 islanders are supposed to have come. 



Some small groves of Sophora must have existed upon the island as late 

 as in 1886, when the U. S. »Mohican» visited the place. Both THOMSON (Te 

 pito te henua, or Easter Island, Smiths. Inst., Ann. Rep., 1891, p. 451) and 

 CoOKE (ibid., 1899, p. 705) state that there were some groups of trees on 

 the hills but that nearly all were dead and decaying, having been stripped of 

 their bark by sheep and cattle which had been introduced some time previously. 



Unfortunately, it is a common experience that devastation follows the 

 white man, and many Pacific islands have been badly ravaged. From the 



