Vol. 8 No. 3 MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN June 23, 1953 



VEGETATION OF NAYASALAND 

 REPORT ON THE VERNAY NYASALAND EXPEDITION OF 1946 



L. J. Brass 



INTRODUCTION 



The Vernay Nyasaland Expedition of the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, on which I represented the New York Botanical Garden, was sponsored 

 and led by Mr. Arthur S. Vernay, a trustee of the Museum and a member of the 

 Council of the Garden. Other members of the party were Dr. Harold E. Anthony, 

 Chairman of the Department of Mammals, American Museum, and the late Capt. 

 Guy C. Shortridge, Director of the Kaffrarian Museum, King William's Town, 

 South A f rica. 



The history of Nyasaland may be said to have begun in 1859, when a party 

 led by David Livingstone, the great explorer-missionary, ascended the Shire 

 River by steam launch from the Zambezi and examined southern parts of the 

 country. Missionaries and traders, following Livingstone, were soon in conflict 

 with Arab slavers and their native allies, and in order to cope with this situation 

 Britain, in 1889, proclaimed a protectorate over the Shire Highlands, in the 

 southern part of the area now included in Nyasaland. Two yeais later, the name 

 Protectorate of British Central Africa was applied to all territories then under 

 British influence north of the Zambezi, including, in addition to all of Nyasaland, 

 parts of Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia. In 1893 the title British Central 

 Africa was confined officially to Nyasaland, and in 1907 the title was changed to 

 Nyasaland Protectorate. 



Beginning in May and ending in October, our work in Nyasaland was car- 

 ried out in the dry season of 1946 (Brass 1948). The principal zoological in- 

 terest of the expedition was in mammals, but some attention was given to the 

 collection of reptiles and amphibians, fishes, and insects. The plant collections 

 of the expedition comprised 2004 numbers, including 235 of non-vascular crypto- 

 gams. An average of 6.2 herbarium sets was collected in vascular plants. 



The taxonomic work on the flowering plants, ferns, and fern allies was under- 

 taken by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This work is still in progress. Except 

 for some few species which I could identify with reasonable certainty in the field, 

 and the mosses, determined by Edwin B. Bartram, the plant names cited in this 

 report rest on the authority of lists received from Kew. All but the following 

 groups were determined by J. P. M. Brenan: ferns (F. Ballard); grasses (C. E. 

 Hubbard); sedges (E. Nelmes); orchids (V. S. Summerhayes); Ranunculaceae, 

 Menispermaceae, Nymphaeaceae, Capparidaceae, Violaceae, Kiggelaria, Pit- 

 tosporaceae, Polygalaceae, Caryophyllaceae, Hypericaceae, Guttiferae, Diptero- 

 carpaceae, Geranium, Crassocephalum, Acanthaceae, Eriocaulaceae, Eriosema 

 (E. Milne Redhead); Anacardiaceae (except Lannea and Sorindeia) f Allophyllus, 

 Lantana, Lippia, Rhynchosia (R. D. Meikle); Melianthaceae (B. Verdcourt); 

 Brachystegia (A. C. Hoyle); Alepidea (H. Weimarck); Gesneriaceae (B. L. Bunt); 

 Amaranthaceae (K. Suessenguth); Proteaceae (R. D. Meikle and J. P. M. Brenan); 

 Lobelia (E. Wimmer); Agathisanthemum, Kohautia, Oldenlandia, Pavetta (C. E. B. 

 Bremekamp). 



New species described, or being described, from the collections of the Vernay 

 Expedition are indicated in the following pages by an asterisk. My serial collec- 

 tion numbers are given for plants which are as yet undetermined. 



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