330' 



Brief Survey of the Affinities and History of the Cyprian Flora. 



Satureia Troodi is closely allied to S. Corsica (Benth.) Briquet which is endemical on the mountains of Corse; 

 a remoter relative, S. pipei-elloides (Stapf) occurs in Lycia. Ballota integri folia and B. Wettstmiii have 

 one near relative only, viz. B. fndescens, which has a very limited distribution in the Maritime Alps. 

 And Bosea cypria joins closely to the two other species that are known of this remakable little genus, 

 viz. B. Yervamora L., which is endemical on the Canaries, and B. Amherstiann (Wall.) Hook, fil., which 

 is only known from the Himalayas. The collective species Cedrus libanotica, to which belongs the sub- 

 species hreri folia, endemical on Cyprus, is in Syria and southern Asia-Minor, in the Himalayas and in 

 northwestern Africa represented by other closely allied subspecies. 



The limits of the present geographical distribution of the individual species of plants are partly deter- 

 mined by the existing natural conditions, (e. g. climatic and geological conditions) and partly by historical 

 causes. If we wish to go thoroughly into the history of the vegetation within a country, it is necessary 

 in details to study the geographical distribution of a fairly great number of individual representative plant- 

 species, as well as the factors on which their distribution is dependent. At the same time it is necessary 

 to make use of the results of Geology in regard to the history of development of the adjacent countries 

 and the changes of climate in ancient and modern times. 



Much work still remains to be done before it will be possible to obtain clearness in the many 

 difficult problems attached to the phytogeography of the Mediterranean countries. Still many tracts are not 

 sufficiently investigated with regard to their flora, not least in the eastern countiies of the Mediterranean. 

 Numerous critical groups of plants, which within the dlfterent parts of the area are represented through 

 mutually closely related species (and types of a lower systematical rank), have to a great extent been 

 neglected. Just these groups will, when more closely studied, in many cases be able to throw new light 

 on the question of the mutual relations between the individual flora-ai-eas. Our knowledge of the changes 

 of level and climate in the Mediterranean countries since the Tertiary period is equally very incomplete. 



Among the most important, widely distributed Mediterranean plants — also among those which 

 play a great part in the vegetation of Cyprus — the present distribution of many is surely mainly due to 

 climatic conditions. As an instance may be mentioned the olive-tree {Olea eiiropaea), which has a very 

 wide-spread distribution in most of the countries round the Mediterranean, especially in the vicinity of the 

 coasts; as particularly shown by Theobald Fischer the northern limit of the olive-tree is in its main 

 features dependent on the climatic conditions, above all on the winter-temperature'). It is, however, one 

 of the most striking features in the phytogeography of the Mediterranean countries, that the limits of 

 the distribution of a lot of species are evidently quite independent of the present climatological border- 

 lines. Numerous species have an extremely restricted distribution, being confined for instance to a single, 

 often quite small, island, or to one mountain only; in many instances such a species is in quite neigh- 

 bouring disti'icts replaced by nearly related species. Other species .show great interspaces in their present 

 distribution, being found only in a greater or smaller number of isolated growing-places, which are often 

 far distant from each other. Especially Adolf Engler has drawn our attention to this circumstance, 

 and in his fundamental work: ,,Versuch einer Entwickelungsgeschichte der Pflanzenwelt"' (1879) a fair 

 number of examples of Mediterranean plants with such widely separated areas of distribution are mentioned, 

 amongst these also several species occurring on Cyprus-). Several species which are found on Cyprus, and 

 in part also in other surrounding countries, are absent in the middlemost parts of the Mediterranean, especially 

 in Italy, but are again refound in South-France, Spain and Portugal, or western North-Africa; such species 

 are f. inst. Nigella Nigellastrum, Hypecoum grandiflorum, Malrella Sherardiana, Linum nodifiorum, Astra- 

 galus lusitaniciis, Pistacia atlantica, Lagoeeia euminoides, Elaeagnus angustifolius, Biita Buxhaitmii, a. o. 



1) Theobald Fischer, Der Olbaum, seine geographische Verbreitung. seine wirtsihaftliche und knlturliistorische 

 Bedeutimg, p. 26. Gotha 1904. 

 ■^) L. c, I, p. 47, etc. 



