CHAPTER VI 



THE LARGER FOREIGN DRIFT OF THE TURKS ISLANDS 



In Chapter I. special prominence is given to the analysis of the 

 larger foreign drift of the Turks Islands. It is now proposed to deal 

 with each plant in the order of frequency of their fruits or seeds in 

 the stranded drift of this small group, the several plants being treated 

 often at length, from the standpoint of distribution. This will 

 afford an opportunity of discussing the various interesting problems 

 which these plants raise. 



ECASTAPHYLLUM (?) 



These legumes, which are amongst the most frequent of the fruits 

 in the larger drift of the Turks Islands, have some of the characters 

 of those of Ecastaphyllum, but are certainly not those of E. brownei 

 (Pers.), a common West Indian littoral small tree or shrub. They are 

 1 J— 1§ inch long, broadly oval, compressed, and have a shining 

 reticulate epidermis. The single seed has thin, pervious coverings ; 

 but in no case did I come upon one that was sound, all of them being 

 in various stages of decay. 



Spondias lutea, Linn. (Hog Plum) 



Few fruits are more frequently represented in the beach-drift of 

 the West Indies and of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of tropical 

 America than those of this tree. It is not, however, the fleshy drupe 

 but its hard "stone" invested by a thick fibro-suberous covering, 

 that is here found. These " stones," which are oblong in form and 

 usually 1-1 J inch in length, float very buoyantly, and in their weather- 

 beaten condition amongst old drift might be even taken for old 

 corks rounded by the waves. 



The trees grow in open wooded districts, both inland and at the 

 coast, and not uncommonly they are frequent at the riverside, as 

 in the case of the Black River in Jamaica, or they grow in numbers 

 on the slopes of a river valley, as I noticed in Tobago, or they may 

 be found amongst the vegetation bordering the beach, as I observed 

 in Grenada and Trinidad. Writing of the tree in Jamaica at the end 

 of the seventeenth century, Sloane says that it was found every- 

 where in the lowland woods and in the savannahs (II., 127). In 

 Jamaica it is associated in the open inland woods with such trees 

 as Cedrela odorata (Jamaican cedar), Pithecolobium filicifolium 



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