FLORA OF ADEN. 
51 
S,— General Aspects. 
{a) Aden Peninsula. 
When J. D. Hooker visited Aden in 1847, he characterized the 
place as follows : “\Upon the whole, it is the ugliest, blackest, most 
desolate, and most dislocated piece of land, of its size, that ever 
I set eyes on ; and I have seen a good many ugly places. ” l 
The impression which the country produced upon T. von Heuglin in 
1857, was not more favourable. He speaks of the u bare naked rocks 
which cannot find their equal in any part of the world as regards 
dryness, infernal heat and barrenness.” 2 
In order to give an accurate idea of the general aspects of the flora of 
Aden we cannot do better than to reproduce a few extracts from 
Anderson and Hooker. 
“The only patches of vegetation 99 says Anderson, “ occur at the base 
of the gorges [narrow valleys radiating from the ridge of the Shum Shum 
Range], just above the sea-line; and the loose and tolerably fertile soil 
accumulated there consists of scorise mixed with sand and the detritus 
washed from the rocks above by the violent torrents which rush down 
every ravine after the rare but heavy falls of rain. Along the cliffs 
utter sterility reigns, except where a ledge of rock or a mass of cinder 
has allowed the accumulation of sufficient earth to afford sustenance to a 
few straggling bushes of Capparis galeata or Adenium obesum . 
“ Dipterygium glaucum , six or seven species of Capparidacea , 
Reseda amblyocar pa, Cassia pubescens and obovata, Acacia eburnea and 
a few Duphorbiacece are the only common plants ; and some of these are 
so plentiful, that in many places they abound to the exclusion of all 
other plants. The other species are either very local, or sparingly 
scattered over the peninsula. 
“ All the species are more or less peculiar in their habit, and some are 
so strange in their appearance as to constitute the anomalies of the 
natural orders to which they belong. As examples may be enume- 
rated : — Sphecr ocoma Hooheri among Caroyphyllacea , Adenium obesum , 
with its almost globular fleshy trunk, naked branchlets bearing a tuft 
of leaves and an umbel of beautiful flowers, Moving aapt era in which 
the leaves are reduced to long subrigid raches, the prickly Jatropha 
spinosa , and strongest of all, the Aeluropus Arabians, a grass with short 
spiny leaves, so sharp, that it was with the greatest difficulty I could 
1 In Hooker’s London Journal of Botany, VII (1848), page 807. 
2 Heuglin, T. von, Reise langs der Somali-Ku ste im Jahre 1857. In Peterinann’s 
Mitteilungen (1860), page 435. 
E 2 
