18 
The Philippine Journal of Science 
1914 
continued presence of these grass-covered areas is due primarily 
to man, a matter which I have previously discussed in detail. 3 
Mr. Safford is authority for the statement that the existing 
forests in Guam consist almost entirely of strand trees, such as 
Hernandia, Terminalia, Artocarpus, Ficus, Calophyllum, Herit- 
iera, and Barringtonia, intermingled with lianas, epiphytes, and 
few shrubs. Recent collections in Guam, however, have added 
such arborescent genera as Eugenia, Aglaia, Elaeocarpus, Poly- 
althia, Cynometra, Melochia, Gymnosporia, Flacourtia, Decasper- 
mum, and Tarenna. This leads one to suspect that the forest 
flora is really rather complex, at least in those parts of the island, 
toward the north end, where the original vegetation has not 
been so much disturbed as in the more densely populated regions. 
The character of the vegetation, however, has been profoundly 
altered by man as indicated by the very high percentage of 
introduced species. 
Guam was discovered by Magellan on March 6, 1521, during 
his voyage of circumnavigation of the globe. After the founda- 
tion of the city of Manila in the Philippines, regular traffic was 
established between there and the west coast of Mexico, the 
Spanish posessions in the Pacific being governed as dependencies 
of New Spain. The galleons sailed annually, first from Nativi- 
dad but later from Acapulco in Mexico for Manila. Guam was a 
port of call for all ships on the outward, but not on the return 
voyage. This fact is of considerable importance in connection 
with the matter of the early transmission of weeds and economic 
plants from Mexico to the Marianne Islands and the Philippines. 
No comprehensive botanical exploration of Guam has ever 
been undertaken. The first collections were those of Thaddeus 
Haenke and Luis Nee, botanists of the Malaspina Expedition, 
who were in Guam from February 12 to 24, 1792. In November, 
1817, Adalbert von Chamisso, botanist of the Romanzoff Expedi- 
tion, made a very short visit to Guam and collected a few plants 
there. A little more than a year later Freycinet’s Expedition 
arrived and Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupre, botanist of the expedi- 
tion, spent about eight months in a botanical exploration of 
Guam and the neighboring Islands of Rota and Tinian. Gaudi- 
chaud probably made the largest single collection to date in the 
botanical exploration of Guam but, as noted by Safford, on the 
return voyage to France his collections were saturated with sea 
water and badly damaged ; doubtless very many of his specimens 
“Philip. Journ. Sci. 7 (1912) Bot. 149-151. 
