THE AZORES 



431 



If one cultivates J. nana in the lowlands, as has been done both in 

 the Berlin and in the Zurich botanical gardens, it changes into 

 Juniperus communis. This has been tried both with seeds and by 

 transplanting a mature specimen (Kirchner)." Baron von Mueller 

 in his Select Extra-Tropical Plants (p. 170) writes that under favour- 

 able circumstances J. communis may attain a height of nearly fifty 

 feet. 



The behaviour of J. oxycedrus is much the same. In South Europe 

 it rarely exceeds the dimensions of a bush, five or six feet high. 

 Yet Hooker in his book on Marocco (p. 252) refers to the occurrence 

 at an altitude of about 3500 feet on the slopes of the Great Atlas 

 of "an old weather-beaten trunk measuring about five and a half 

 feet in circumference and seemingly of high antiquity." In Madeira, 

 as we are told by Mr. J. Y. Johnson (Encycl. Brit. 9th edit., XV., 180), 

 J. oxycedrus was formerly abundant and grew to a height of forty 

 or fifty feet. It is, therefore, highly probable that under the favour- 

 able conditions for forest growth which evidently prevailed in the 

 Azores at the time of their discovery, the present Juniper trees, which 

 do not usually exceed ten or eleven feet high, may have attained 

 the great dimensions attributed in the pages of the historians of 

 the group to the " cedros " of the original forests. 



But the points we are most concerned with here are the shortening 

 of the leaves in the present Azorean Junipers and the validity of 

 regarding this feature as a specific distinction. The matter is thus 

 stated by Watson (p. 224) : " The leaves (of the Azorean plants) 

 are wide and blunt in comparison with those of the South European 

 Oxycedrus, and only half their length." From somewhat limited 

 materials at his disposal he formed the opinion that the Azorean 

 Juniper seems a wider divergence from the European Oxycedrus 

 than are the Junipers of Madeira and the Canaries, the transition, 

 however, being slight from the Azorean to the Madeiran form and 

 from this again to the Canarian form. However, it stands as a peculiar 

 Azorean species in the Index Kewensis, and Prof. Parlatore takes 

 the same view in De Candolle's Prodromus. The same view is 

 taken, according to Trelease, by Antoine in his Kupressineengattungen. 



I will now give my own observations. On Pico I found that 

 there were two forms of the plant connected by intermediate stages, 

 the one with short obtusely pointed leaves tending to lie close to 

 the stem, and near the " brevifolia " type, the other with long almost 

 linear acutely pointed leaves tending to spread away from the stem, 

 and near the " oxycedrus " type. As regards the position and relative 

 length and breadth of the leaves these are also the characters, as 

 indicated by a figure after Warming given in Schimper's Plant 

 Geography (p. 36), which distinguish J. nana from the ordinary 

 type of J. communis. 



On the wind-swept upper slopes of Pico da Vara in San Miguel, 

 where the plants are much dwarfed, I found the short-leaved type 

 prevailing. In the Carreiro herbarium in the Municipal Library 

 at Pont a Delgada there are short-leaved specimens from Pico de 

 Vara and long-leaved specimens from Siete Cidades. On the slopes 

 of Pico I often found the two forms associated in the same locality 



