Plant Records from Aur Atoll and Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands, 
Micronesia. Pacific Plant Studies 9^ 
Harold St. John^ 
Previous to World War II, the collections 
of plants from the Marshall Islands were so 
few and so local that the flora had not even 
been well sampled. Since the American occu- 
pation of the islands, several botanists have 
visited various of the islands and made plant 
collections. Nevertheless, the published data 
on the flora are very meager and include 
nothing concerning Aur and Majuro Atolls. 
The known flora of the Marshall Islands is 
summarized in Kanehira (1935), though he 
includes only part of the species recorded 
from Jaluit by Koidzumi (1915) and, of 
course, none of those subsequently listed 
from Jaluit by Okabe (1941). 
In December, 1945, the writer was leader 
of a party of scientists from the University of 
Hawaii which made a scientific reconnais- 
sance of the Marshalls and other parts of 
Micronesia. The trip was made possible by 
the United States Navy, which provided 
travel by airplane and boat and other facilities. 
On December 17, 1945, the party visited 
Aur Atoll, traveling by sea plane and landing 
on the lagoon. After ferrying ashore in native 
canoes, the group had 3 hours available for 
collection and study of the flora on Tabal, 
one of the inhabited islets of that atoll. 
^This is the ninth in a series of papers designed to 
present descriptions, revisions, and records of Pacific 
island plants. The preceding papers were published as 
Bernice P. Bishop Mus., Occas. Papers: 17(7), 1942; 
17(13), 1943; 18(5), 1945; Amer. Fern Jour. 35: 87-89, 
1945; Torrey Bot. Club, Bui. 73: 588, 1946; Pacific Sci. 
2: 96-113, 1948; 2: 272-273, 1948. Manuscript re- 
ceived February 8, 1950. 
^Chairman, Department of Botany, University of 
Hawaii. 
On December 18 to 19, 1945, by L. C. I. 
ship, a visit was made in Majuro Atoll to 
Majuro Islet, a large, inhabited islet on the 
west side of the lagoon. On both islets native 
informants were employed, and from them 
were learned the vernacular names of the 
plants collected. All native plants and about 
half of the introduced cultivated ones and 
half of the adventives were known to the in- 
habitants by Marshallese vernacular names. 
These were recorded as they sounded to the 
observer in American phonetic rendering, 
just as the vocabulary of Pingelap was re- 
corded. The explanation of the vowel sounds 
used in both areas is given in the report on 
the flora of Pingelap by St. John (1948: 99). 
The decision not to use the alphabet of the 
current U. S. Navy Dictionary (1945) was de- 
liberate, due to dissatisfaction with the com- 
plexity of its vowels and the paucity of its 
consonants. Nearly all of these native ver- 
nacular names are here recorded for the first 
time, since Koidzumi, in his account of the 
vegetation of Jaluit Atoll, recorded as com- 
mon names only the Japanese names. Later, 
Okabe (1941), writing also of Jaluit, recorded 
21 Marshallese vernacular names, but only 
18 apply to species in the present list and 
several are obviously different names. 
The specimens collected by the University 
of Hawaii Expedition are deposited in the 
Bishop Museum, Honolulu. 
In the following list the native plants are 
printed in bold-face roman type, while the 
adventive weeds and cultivated exotics are in 
bold-face italics. 
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