THE FLORA OF JETHOU. 



BY MR. E. D. MARQUAND. 



To look at on the map Jethou appears a very tiny affair 

 indeed, for it hardly measures half a mile in any direction, 

 but when once you have effected a landing (not always an 

 easy matter, by the way), and scrambling up the slippery 

 cliff-side, start off' with the determination of seeing every nook 

 and corner of the island within the space of a few hours, you 

 gradually become impressed with the fact that Jethou is very 

 much bigger than it looks ; and still more powerfully does 

 this conviction take hold of you if you should happen to 

 be botanising, and all the while labouring under the painful 

 endeavour to get through a maximum of work in a minimum 

 of time. 



A noticeable feature about Jethou, from a botanical point 

 of view, is that the great bulk of the vegetation consists of 

 comparatively few species ; very much fewer than an equal 

 area of similar country in Guernsey, for instance ; whilst the 

 entire absence of many plants growing more or less plentifully 

 at Herm, only a few hundred yards off, is very remarkable. 

 Without knowing anything of their relative positions, any 

 botanist would at once affirm that Jethou is a piece of Herm, 

 and not a fragment of Guernsey ; in fact, its flora resembles 

 that of the former island so very closely, that it is difficult to 

 account for the non-existence of plants which, having a 

 knowledge of Herm, one would reasonably expect to find. 

 I am not, of course, speaking of plants for which no suitable 

 habitat exists — the absence of anything like a rivulet or a 

 pool, or even a marshy spot, accounts for the want of many 

 Herm species, and the same remark applies to plants peculiar 

 to commons and sandy seashores, which are not represented 

 in Jethou. 



Professor C. C. Babington in his Primitive Florce Sarnicce 

 enumerates 113 flowering plants and two ferns as indigenous to 

 Jethou; but this number is by no means exhaustive, since on 

 the day our Society visited the Island (June 25th) my own 



