202 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



Though not a mangrove, it nearly always accompanies the forma- 

 tion; yet it can accommodate itself to the dry, sandy beach or to 

 the dunes behind, to a muddy flat, and even to a rocky shore. Its 

 various stations are well illustrated in Jamaica, where it occurs all 

 round the island; but rarely can one dissociate it altogether from 

 the surroundings of a mangrove swamp; and in most cases where 

 it grows on a sandy beach fronting the coast a mangrove swamp lies 

 in the rear of the beach. Though in Jamaica and in other islands 

 it may be found growing on a typical dry, sandy beach and on a 

 rocky coast, it is around the mangrove borders immediately skirting 

 the Avicennia and Laguncularia trees, which form the margin of 

 the formation, that it finds its most typical station. In this con- 

 nection it often skirts a mangrove swamp on the land side, and 

 when it is found on the seaward side it is usually growing on a thin 

 strip of sandy beach thrown up by the waves. It is often mixed up 

 with Laguncularias and Avicennias on the exposed muddy shores 

 of lagoons communicating with the sea. Quite remarkable is its 

 frequency in the Black River Morass. Here, though it seemed to 

 prefer drier ground, it might be observed two miles inland associated 

 with Typhas and tall sedges. Its variety in coastal stations is well 

 illustrated in Harshberger's work. But it is to its association with 

 the outer mangrove growth of Avicennia nitida and Laguncularia 

 racemosa that he chiefly refers, as in the case of Cuba, the Virgin 

 Islands area, the Bahamas, and the Californian Peninsula, the 

 designation of " Conocarpus-mangrove formation " being employed. 

 Yet he speaks of its growing, either prostrate or in dwarfed con- 

 dition, on coastal rocks in Bermuda and in the Bahamas; whilst 

 in the locality first named it forms thickets on the dunes. 



All its capacities for different stations are displayed in the Turks 

 Islands, and in fact they are all illustrated on Grand Turk; but 

 the destruction of much of the original extensive mangrove formation 

 on the two largest islands, Grand Turk and Salt Cay, has often given 

 prominence to stations away from the mangroves. However, in 

 the first-named island it is still to be seen associated with Lagun- 

 cularias on the land side of the swamps. On the rocky surface of 

 Long Cay it thrives in association with Borrichia arborescens ; but 

 it adapts itself to the great wind-pressure, to which it is there com- 

 monly exposed, by adopting a semi-prostrate habit, like several of 

 the shrubs (Tournefortia, Suriana, etc.) on these windward cays. 

 Here it clambers over the rocks, and is not more than one or two feet 

 in height. This is evidently the variety " procumbens " of Jacquin, 

 as given by Grisebach. It thrives on the weather side of Salt Cay, 

 both at the borders of the beach and on the dunes behind in the 

 company of Tournefortia gnaphalodes and Suriana maritima. It 

 may be one of the prevailing small trees or shrubs in the half-stony, 

 half-sandy interior of an island like Cotton Cay, where it is in the 

 company of the Turk's-head Cactus ; but even here it may be sur- 

 mised that its original station was around the central lagoon with the 

 mangroves that have since disappeared. This plant is one of the 

 marginal associates of the mangrove belt that are able by their greater 

 adaptability to survive the destruction of the mangroves at the 



