118 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



Grenada, for reasons given below. In Jamaica I found them at 

 various places, but only on the north coasts; but since they were 

 obtained by Morris amongst the stranded drift near Kingston, it is 

 evident that they may also be thrown up on the south side (ChalL 

 Bot., IV., 302). In the Turks Islands they were frequent on every 

 beach that held drift. 



The distribution of the plant in the New World is peculiar. It is 

 found in Jamaica and probably also in Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico, 

 and occurs on both coasts of Central America. But it is absent from 

 the Bahamas, and though existing in the northern islands of the 

 Lesser Antilles, as in Guadeloupe, it has not been recorded from the 

 southern islands and from Trinidad. The implication of the absence 

 of its seeds from the beach-drift of Trinidad and the adjacent islands 

 off the Spanish Main is that it is not to be found in the neighbouring 

 portion of the South American continent, that is to say, in the regions 

 drained by the Orinoco and the large rivers of the Guianas. In these 

 continental regions its place, though not its station, is taken by two 

 or three other species. 



Of these, probably the most typical is Entada polystachya, a plant 

 which I have discussed at length from a particular standpoint in 

 my Studies in Seeds and Fruits. This species, which has much 

 smaller non-buoyant seeds, has its home, according to Grisebach, in 

 the Lesser Antilles from Dominica to Trinidad, as well as on the 

 adjacent South American mainland, and, strangely enough, also in 

 Panama. It grows away from the beach and often on trees by 

 the side of rivers. It is not represented in the beach-drift, its 

 seeds possessing no floating power, and evidently it could only be 

 dispersed by currents through the agency of the separate joints 

 into which the pod breaks up, the buoyancy of which could not be 

 great. 



With regard to the absence of Entada scandens from Trinidad and 

 the neighbouring islands of Tobago and Grenada, I may say that it 

 is not represented in Hart's Herbarium List for Trinidad. Mr. Broad- 

 way, who had an experience covering several years of the flora of 

 this region of the West Indies, told me that it has not been found 

 there. The only localities given by Grisebach are Guadeloupe and 

 Jamaica, but the presence of its seeds in such quantities on the 

 Turks Islands beaches indicates that it must be at home in San 

 Domingo and Porto Rico, from which the seeds are in all probability 

 derived. Its seeds occur in the drift on both sides of the Isthmus 

 of Panama and on the beaches of Ecuador, and the plants grow in 

 the woods at the back of the coasts in those regions. 



Grisebach, when referring to the station of Entada scandens in 

 Jamaica, says that it is common in mountain woods; and it was 

 usually in that station that I found it. But it may survive on trees 

 beside streams and ditches in districts where the woods have long 

 since been mostly cleared away for cultivation, as at Moneague. The 

 greatest altitudes above the sea at which the plant came under my 

 notice in Jamaica were on the slopes of Mount Diablo at 2000 feet, 

 at Pallet at nearly 2000 feet, and at New Find near Lumsden at 

 about 1500 feet — the two last localities being in the mountains at 



