26 
AUSTRALASIAN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 
UMBELLIFERZE. 
Azorella Selago Hook. f. 
Azorella Sdago Hook. I. FI. Antarct. II (1847), p. 284, t. 99, and Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. 
vol. 168 (1879), p. 20; T. Kirk Students’ FI. (1899), p. 191; Schenk in Pflanzen- 
geogr. Subantark. Insel (1905), p. 29, tt. 1 to 10; Cheesem. Man. N.Z. FI. (1906), 
p. 200, and Subantarctic Islands of N.Z. II (1909), p. 407. 
Macquarie Island :■—Abundant, ascending to the tops of the hills. Fraser; 
Scott (1880); A. Hamilton (1894); H. Hamilton (1912-1913). 
This remarkable plant was originally discovered in Kerguelen Island in 1776 
by Mr. W. Anderson, the surgeon during Cook’s third voyage. At that time, not 
much interest was taken in Antarctic plants, and Anderson’s specimens remained 
undescribed until Hooker published the Flora Antarctica in 1844-1847. Prior to that 
time, however, it had been collected in Fuegia by Darwin and Captain King, and 
Hooker himself had found it to be most abundant in Kerguelen. During the “ Challenger ” 
expedition it was also collected on the Crozets, Marion Island, and Heard Island. For 
the first information respecting its occurrence on Macquarie Island we are indebted to 
Mr. C. Fraser, for some time Superintendent of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, who, 
prior to 1832, sent specimens of it to Kew. In 1880 the species was gathered by Dr. 
Scott, who remarks that “ it grows on the hillsides, forming globular masses often 4 feet 
across.” A. Hamilton, when describing his visit to Macquarie Island in 1894, says 
that on the hill-tops the special feature of the vegetation was the Azorella , with its 
bright green convex masses of stems and leaves. H. Hamilton verbally informed 
me that it is abundant on the hills and open plateaux, at the higher levels forming 
the chief component of the scanty vegetation. 
Professor Mosely, in a descriptive account of Marion Island (Notes by a 
Naturalist on the “Challenger,” pp. 163-170), draws attention to the fact that at an 
elevation of 900 feet, where the temperature of the air was 45°F., the thermometer, 
when plunged into the centre of a mass of Azorella, rose to 50°. He argues that “ it 
is evident that these mounds retain and store up a considerable quantity of the sun’s 
heat, and this fact yields a partial explanation of their peculiar form, which is that of 
so many otherwise widely different Antarctic plants, and of some New Zealand alpine 
plants ( Raoulia , Haastici). No doubt, power gained of resistance to wind is one of the 
chief causes of assumption of this form.” 
The magnificent series of plates given by Dr. Schenk in his “ Pflanzengeographie 
der Subantarcktischen Insel” shows how much the physiognomy of the vegetation of 
the islands of the Kerguelen Group (Kerguelen, Crozets, Marion, &c.) is affected by the 
presence of the hummocks of Azorella. And Mr. A. Hamilton’s explicit statement 
“ that at about 300 feet you gain a plateau so swept by the antarctic gales that 
vegetation is reduced to compact closely growing mosses, small Uncinias, and the 
conspicuous cushion-like masses of Azorella Selago ” shows that the same is the case 
in the uplands of Macquarie Island. 
