XVI BOTANY OF SOCOTRA. 



Prof. Welcker. Dr Schweinfurth investigated the botany of the island. 

 On learning that he was on his way to Socotra, I sent him a catalogue of 

 our plant-gatherings, and he was thereby, he states, enabled to give particular 

 attention to filling up gaps in and adding to what we had collected. "With a 

 generosity which is pleasing as it is rare, he subsequently sent his collections 

 to me in England, in order that the whole flora might be worked out in one. 

 I have already had opportunity to express publicly my lively appreciation of 

 this act of friendship and self-abnegation, and I wish here to put the fact again 

 on record, and to say how much Dr Schweinfurth's specimens have contributed 

 to the satisfactory working out of the details of the flora. The value of his 

 collection must not be measured either by the number of the species or by 

 the species he found which we had not gathered. In the excellence of his 

 specimens and their completeness, and in the way in which they so frequently 

 supplemented, in flower and fruit characters, deficiencies in ours, — therein lay 

 the value of Schweinfurth's plants, and I cannot appraise it too highly. 



The following pages are intended to give a description of the Flora of 

 Socotra as it is known now — the knowledge being derived from the explorations 

 and collections made by Dr Schweinfurth and by the members of our expedi- 

 tion. Specimens from the former source are indicated by " Schweinf." with 

 his collecting number; those from the latter by " B.C. S."— Balfour, Cockburn, 

 and Scott — with our collecting number. Before our expedition no plants were 

 known with certainty from the island save the Aloe Perryi, which Mr Baker 

 had described from fragmentary specimens brought by Commander Wykeham 

 Perry and Mr Collins ; but in course of working up our collections I have 

 discovered several specimens which had been previously brought from the 

 island, and in the descriptive portion of the flora I have noted the collector's 

 or sender's name. In almost every case such plants have been also found 

 by the later expeditions. I may tell here the history of these former 

 collections. 



We have identified all the plants mentioned by Wellsted in his Memoir on 

 the Island (see page xxi), and I have referred to his description under the 

 several species. One plant only, Romulea purpurascens, var. edulis, which he 

 does not mention in his Memoir, is recorded in Kew Herbarium as having been 

 brought by him from the island. 



A number of plants are marked as collected by " Nimmo." These belong to 

 a set in the Kew Herbarium, marked in Sir William Hooker's writing, " Shores 

 of the Red Sea." By the kind assistance of Sir Joseph Hooker, I have found, 

 in Sir William Hooker's correspondence preserved at Kew, that these plants 

 were sent home by Mr Nimmo * from Bombay. Many of the specimens in the 



* Of Mr Nimmo I have not been able to find out many particulars. He, as Prof. Oliver points out, 

 completed, from the 200th page, Graham's " Catalogue of Bombay Plants." 



