384 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



a long stay on the summit. But the ascent is by no means an inter- 

 esting experience for the botanist, since his thoughts are more likely 

 to dwell on the lost forests than on the surviving vegetation. 



The Characteristic Coast Plants of the Azores. — Though 

 my experience was mainly confined to the island of Pico, it can be 

 supplemented by notes made on Fayal and San Miguel. The coasts 

 of the islands of the Azores are mostly rock-bound and often pre- 

 cipitous, beaches of any size being, as a rule, infrequent. The most 

 typical plants include the following, which are more or less generally 

 distributed over the group — Beta maritima ; Crithmum maritimum ; 

 Euphorbia azorica, regarded by some as a variety of the South Euro- 

 pean E. pinea, L. ; Euphorbia peplis ; Hyoscyamus albus ; Juncus 

 acutus ; Plantago coronopus ; Polygonum maritimum ; Salsola kali ; 

 Silene maritima ; Spergularia marina, probably far more widely 

 distributed in the group than is admitted by later authors; and 

 Statice limonium. 



One of the most interesting localities for beach plants that I came 

 upon was the sandy beach of Porto Pym, in Fayal. In their order 

 of frequency the plants were Ipomoea carnosa, R. Br., Salsola kali, 

 Euphorbia peplis, Cakile edentula, and Polygonum maritimum. Some 

 of them, such as the species of Ipomoea and Cakile, are known to have 

 been growing on this beach for more than seventy years, having 

 been found there by Watson in 1842, and collected since by other 

 botanists, as by C S. Brown in 1894. It is probable that Cakile 

 edentula was originally introduced with ballast, a matter discussed 

 in the general treatment of that plant. 



The most frequent plant on the rocky coasts of Pico is Euphorbia 

 azorica ; but Plantago coronopus and Juncus acutus are also common. 

 On the sandy beaches grow in places Polygonum maritimum, often 

 in association with Hyoscyamus albus ; whilst Salsola kali occurs 

 scantily. Silene maritima and Spergularia marina grow both on 

 the sand and on the rocks, and sometimes in sandy pockets in the 

 lava rock. Crithmum maritimum (Samphire) is found here and there 

 on the rocks, as at Praynha do Norte; but it is much appreciated 

 by the inhabitants for eating with fish, and it is likely that its relative 

 scarcity on the Pico coasts is due to this cause. On the beach just 

 south of Magdalena I found Ipomoea carnosa, previously only known 

 in this group from the island of Fayal. 



On the rocky coast at San Mattheus and at Magdalena there 

 exists a peculiar plant, concerning the identity of which I am in 

 doubt. It is a very fleshy plant, of which unnamed specimens 

 from San Jorge in the herbarium of the Ponta Delgada Museum 

 are enclosed in a Mesembryanthemum cover, having been collected in 

 1905 and 1908, or ten or twelve years after Trelease's visit. The 

 plants grow prostrate on the lava rocks, and have purplish terminal 

 flowers. They exist in quantity on the rocky flat close to a windmill 

 just north of the town of Magdalena. The species comes nearest 

 to Mesembryanthemum ; but it has a four-valved capsule that dehisces 

 loculicidally, leaving the axis in the centre of the fruit. The seeds 

 have the appearance of Stellaria seeds, and are round, blackish, 

 scrobiculate or warty, about a millimetre across, and have an embryo 



