895 



THE FLORA OF ADEN. 



By 



E. Blatter, S.J. 



Aden is the only part of Arabia which, regarding its flora, has been 

 explored in a somewhat satisfactory way. As early as 1846 Edgeworth 

 paid a short visit to Aden and collected 42 plants, which, later on, he 

 described in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1847 

 J. D. Hooker starting on his expedition to the Himalayas came to Aden, 

 and a second time in 1851 when he returned to England in company with 

 Dr. Thomson. Each time he collected as much as a short visit allowed 

 him to do. In 1860 Thomas Anderson, of the Bengal Medical Service, 

 published his "'' Florula Adenensis" in the Supplement to Vol. V. of 

 the " Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society." He had 

 made two excursions in Aden when on his journey to England in 

 1859. The material collected during his explorations along with the 

 plants gathered in former years by J. D. Hooker, Oolonel Madden, 

 and the German traveller Schomburgk, enabled him to describe 94 

 species. Since that time our "Bombay Libraries" keep deep silence 

 about any further finds in Aden ; the same blank we notice in our 

 Herbaria, and it is only a few years ago that the "' Bombay Natural 

 History Society " was presented with an excellent collection of 

 Aden plants by Ool. W. S. Birdwood, who had spent some years in a 

 military capacity at Aden. His specimens are almost throughout 

 complete, admirably prepared, and. well preserved. When I had 

 already finished a list of the plants contained in Birdwood's Herbarium, 

 I came across a recent contribution to the flora of Aden by K. 

 Krause 1 . In his catalogue we find, of course, the plants mentioned 

 by Thomas Anderson, and, besides, some 80 species which partly had 

 been published in various journals, partly are preserved in the Botani- 

 cal Museum of Berlin. Amongst the latter, there is a collection made 

 by T. M. Hildebrandt in 1872 when he started from Aden on his 

 journey to Somaliland, another one by Ellenbeck in 1899, and a third 

 one by W. Busse in 1903. Schweinfurth visited Aden three times, viz., 

 in March 1881, December 1888, and in November 1889. The results 



iK. Krause, Beitwege zur Kenntniss der Flora von Aden. (Sonderdrnck aus Engler's 

 Bot. Jahrbiich., Vol. XXXV, Heft 5.) 



