CHAPTER XVIII 



the Azores (continued) 



The Proportion of Native or Indigenous Plants in the 

 Azores. — In these pages we are concerned only with the native 

 flora, and it may at once be remarked that it was in all probability 

 extremely limited. The matter of the introduced plants cannot 

 therefore be dealt with here in any detail; but, from what follows, 

 it will be evident that in restricting the field of discussion to the 

 native plants, we assume a very great reduction in the size of the 

 present flora, a flora which has often been erroneously described 

 in general references to the archipelago as in the mass indigenous. 

 The very opposite is, indeed, the case; and if we wish to obtain 

 a sense of proportion in this respect we cannot do better than go 

 back to the writings of the earlier botanists interested in the flora, 

 those who, like Seubert and Hochstetter, employed only the truly 

 indigenous plants to characterise their zones of vegetation above 

 the region of cultivation. 



The islands have been colonised for more than four centuries, 

 and during that period multitudes of species have been introduced, 

 either by accident or by intention. Without discrimination, it 

 would be possible to make an extensive collection at the present 

 time that would include hardly any of the native flowering plants, 

 and the same could have been done a century or two ago. In fact, 

 a small collection of about twenty-seven species, gathered by George 

 Forster on Fayal in 1775, was almost entirely composed of plants 

 that had been introduced since the discovery of the islands (see 

 Note 33 of the Appendix). Trelease, the most authoritative of 

 recent investigators of the flora from the standpoint of the systematist, 

 finds no difficulty in seeing how " most of the existing species may 

 have been introduced by ordinary means, largely through human 

 agency, since the discovery of the islands " (p. 67); and one cannot 

 be many weeks in the group without recognising the correctness of 

 this opinion. Watson's total of 439 flowering plants is increased 

 in Trelease's pages to about 560; but I should imagine that the 

 original flora did not comprise 200 species, and that the plants which 

 gave their impress to the vegetation did not amount to a hundred. 



Watson makes but little effort, as he himself admits, to distinguish 

 the introduced plants in his catalogue. His position with regard 

 to alien plants is not easy to appreciate now. The old Forbesian 

 hypothesis of a great continental extension of Europe westward 

 would, if applied to the Azores, scarcely raise the question of intro- 

 duced plants. Watson was aware of this, and although taking a 



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