A NOTE ON THE FLORA OF KOLGUEV 
A GLANCE at the remarks on the climate of this island will show how 
very severe the conditions are under which plant-life there exists. As 
a consequence of the frosts of June, the frequent cold-driving mists, 
the prevalence of northerly gales, and the exposed character of the 
country, plants, in a majority of instances, tend to a dwarfed condition 
and an abnormal habit of growth. Thus we find the common yarrow 
(Achillea millefolium) reduced to a plant some three inches high and 
tomentose. The woolly willow (Sa/ix danata), which on the mainland, 
not ten miles from the sea, is as high as a man, grows nowhere on 
Kolguev higher than the knee, and only reaches that height in the 
most favourable spots. 
Plants, again, are exceedingly late in flowering and in ripening fruit. 
We left the twin-flowered violet (Viola diffora) in full flower at Troms6 
on June 11. Yet on Kolguev it had only just come into bloom on 
August 2. The cloudberry (Aubus chamemorus) was not generally 
ripe with us till August 25. Yet the Russians told me that these 
berries were ‘over’ on the mainland when they left the Petchora on 
August 11. We saw no fruit of A. arcticus, and the Samoyeds all 
agreed in saying that it bore none on Kolguev. 
Of the ninety-five flowering plants found by myself on Kolguev, 
some sixty-three are recorded as British. But of these, as one would 
have expected, many are in Britain either rare or exceedingly local. 
Thus Avadis Al~ina has only been recorded from Skye;! Draba 
rupestris is ‘rare on some of the higher mountain summits of Scotland 
and north-west Ireland.’ ? 
Of the plants which are not British some have nevertheless a wide 
palzarctic and some a circumpolar range. To the former class belong, 
1H. C. Hart., Journ. of Bot., 1887. 2 Bentham and Hooker, 
396 
