260 



ISLAND LIFE 



PART 11 



Facilities for Dispersal of Azorean Plants. — Now in the 

 course of very long periods of time the various causes 

 here enumerated would be sufficient to stock the remotest 

 islands with vegetation, and a considerable part of the 

 Azorean flora appears well adapted to be so conveyed. Of 

 the 439 flowering-plants in Mr. Watson's list, I find that 

 about forty-five belong to genera that have either pappus 

 or winged seeds ; sixty-five to such as have very minute 

 seeds ; thirty have fleshy fruits such as are greedily eaten 

 by birds ; several have hispid seeds ; and eighty-four are 

 glumaceous plants, which are all probably well-adapted 

 for being carried partly by winds and partly by currents, 

 as well as by some of the other causes mentioned. On 

 the other hand we have a very suggestive fact in the 

 absence from the Azores of most of the trees and shrubs 

 with large and heavy fruits, however common they may 

 be in Europe. Such are oaks, chestnuts, hazels, apples, 

 beeches, alders, and firs; while the only trees or large 

 shrubs are the Portugal laurel, mp^tle, laurestinus, elder, 

 Laurus canariensis, Myrica fay a, and a peculiar juniper — 

 all small berry-bearers, and therefore likely to have 

 been conveyed by one or other of the modes suggested 

 above. 



There can be little doubt that the truly indigenous flora 

 of the islands is far more scanty than the number of 

 plants recorded would imply, because a large but unknown 

 proportion of the species are certainly importations, vol- 

 untary or involuntary, by man. As, however, the general 

 character of the whole flora is that of the south-western 

 peninsula of Europe, and as most of the introduced plants 

 have come from the same country, it is almost impossible 

 now to separate them, and Mr. Watson has not attempted 

 to do so. The whole flora contains representatives of 

 eighty natural orders and 250 genera : and even if we 

 suppose that one-half the species only are truly indigenous, 



crater of Kilauea, Hawaii, at 4, 000 feet elevation, and also high up in Tahiti. 

 In order to account for the transporation of the plants, it is not of course 

 necessary that the same species of Procellaria or Diomedea should now 

 range between the distant points where the plants occur. The ancestor of 

 the now differing species might have carried the seeds. The range of the 

 genus is sufficient. " 



