FUNGI AND LICHENS FROM THE ISLAND 



OF GUAM 



Paul Weidemeyer Graff 



With the opening up of the Pacific to trade and travel, the nat- 

 ural sequence of events brings about a more universal interest, 

 both general and scientific, regarding the region. From a botan- 

 ical standpoint our knowledge is as yet extremely limited. A 

 few isolated localities have been worked over to some extent, but 

 even in these places much remains to be accomplished. In the 

 Marianne Islands, of which Guam is the largest, only a few bo- 

 tanical collections of any extent have been made. 



These islands are located, approximately, between 13 0 to 20° 

 north latitude and 143 0 to 146 0 east longitude. The island of 

 Guam itself is about 46 kilometers long and 16 wide at its broad- 

 est part ; this, however, is not in a central location as the island 

 as more or less dumb-bell shaped and only about 5 kilometers 

 ibroad in the region of Agana, the chief town. From San Fran- 

 cisco by way of Honolulu, as the boats ordinarily travel, the 

 islands are about 8,670 kilometers distant and are about 2,440 

 kilometers east from Manila. As is true of a large percentage 

 MDf the Pacific islands, the Marianne Islands are of volcanic origin. 



The island of Guam was discovered by Ferdinand Magellan, 

 during his voyage of circumnavigation, on March 6, 1521, a short 

 time before his fatal visit to the Philippines. The first botanical 

 collection was not made until 1792, when Thaddeus Haenke and 

 Luis Nee of the Malaspina Expedition, with which they were 

 connected as botanists, visited the islands. They spent between 

 February 12th and 24th at Guam but there is no record of any 

 fungi having been preserved by them from that place. In fact, 

 but three fungi have been reported as being collected by them 

 on the entire voyage. Two of these were gathered in Mexico 

 and the other in the Philippine Islands. With this list might 

 also be mentioned the fact that nineteen lichens from the Ameri- 

 can continent, mostly from Peru and Chili, make up the entire 



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