760 • MINNESOTA BOTANICAL STUDIES. 



XLVIII. OBSERVATIONS ON THE FERNS AND 



FLOWERING PLANTS OF THE 



HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.* 



A. A. Heller. 



The Hawaiian group of islands has long been known as pos- 

 sessing peculiar botanical features, and has been visited during 

 the past one hundred years by a number of botanists, the first 

 of whom was David Nelson, who collected there in 1778 and 

 1779, during the third voyage of Captain Cook. 



The principal published accounts of Hawaiian plants are by 

 Chamisso, in Linnaea;. by Gaudichaud, in Botanique du Voy- 

 age de V Uranie, incorrectly cited by Mann and Hillebrand as 

 Bot. Freyc. Voy.; by Meyen, in Nov. Act. Acad. Caes. Leop. 

 Carol. Nat. Car. ; by Asa Gray, in the Botany of the U. S. Ex- 

 ploring Expedition, and in the Proceedings of the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences; by Nuttall, in the Transactions 

 of the American Philosophical Society; by Horace Mann, in the 

 Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, and Pro- 

 ceedings of the American Academy; by Wawra, in Flora, and 

 by Hillebrand, in his Flora of the Hawaiian Islands. Gaudi- 

 chaud also issued a folio atlas, in which are plates of the plants 

 collected on the voyage of the Bonite, but unaccompanied by 

 descriptions. The Hawaiian plants to which these plates refer 

 have mostly been described by different writers, and credited 

 to Gaudichaud. 



The main part of the group, composed of the islands of 

 Hawaii, Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and 

 Niihau, is situated between 18° 55' and 22° 20' N., and 154° 50' 

 and 160° 40' W. Scattered in a northwesterly direction for a 

 distance of 600 or 700 miles, are occasional rocks and small, 

 low islands, now belonging to the young republic. Of these, 

 Laysan island is perhaps the largest, though only a narrow 

 strip of land a few miles long. It is of value only on account 



* A complete series of this collection, amounting to over one thousand specimens 

 of ferns and flowering plants, and including some sixty type specimens, has been pre- 

 sented by Mr. A. A. Heller to the herbarium of the Geological and Natural History 

 Purvey. The whole makes an addition of quite inestimable value to the slate col- 

 lections.— C. M. 



