VII. Remarks on the most Important Plant-Societies of the Island. 



The survey of the most imijortant plant-socictios of Cyprus yiven here, ou the follovvin^f pages, 

 can in no way be considered to be exhaustive. 



When I came to the island, the greater part of the flora was altogether unknown to me, and 

 only little l)y little I became acquainted with the more pi'ominent species. The notes I took of the com- 

 position of the plant-societies, undei' these cii'cumstanccs, could not but be very incomplete. This is partly 

 also to be ascribed to the fact that the most important part of my'work during the spiing — when the 

 vegetation of the lower regions was at its height and everything grew with a wonderful rapidity from day 

 to day — had to be devoted to the merely floristic side of my task. 



Nevertheless I have thought it right to give an extract of the notes on the composition of the 

 vegetation in habitats of a different nature, which I have put down in my diaries, and other notes from my 

 journey. 1 hope they will be able to give a preliminary survey of certain leading traits. Especially as 

 very few such descriptions have hitherto been given from the eastern countries of the Mediterranean— and 

 from Cyprus nothing worth mentioning except some sporadical notes in the paper of Sintenis')— I have 

 thought that my notes might bo of some interest. 



Å. Hydrophile Plant-Societies. 



As is to be expected in a country so deticient in water as Cypius is, the hydrophile plant societies 

 have a very unimpoi'tant place in the vegetation of the island. This is most of all the case with 

 the proper aquatic plant societies, that is if we conceive the word aquatic in the same way as 

 Wakming, viz. only comprising those species, the assimilative organs of which are altogether submerged 

 into the water or at least Boating on the surface of the water.-) But even of the other hydrophile plants, 

 the paludal plants, the root of which is fastened in water or in a watery soil, the assimilative shoots 

 of which, however, will rise— in the main at least— above the surface of the water, even of such plants 

 proportionally few have been seen in Cyprus, and the societies formed by these plants have a strictly 

 limited place. 



I. Aquatic Plant-Societies. 



In the section of this book dealing with the hydrography of the island, p. 3—5 above, it is 

 more precisely mentioned how the existing few open collections of water during the dry season will dry 

 up or decrease to diminutive puddles of water. The vegetation of these puddles mostly consists of algae 



') Paul Sintenis, ('ypLTU unil seiue Flora. 

 -') Warming. Plaiitesauifuiid. ji. 134. 



