BOTANY OF THE LACCADIVES. 
79 
Of the 60 natural orders, 28 are represented by only one species ; 10 by two 
species ; 7 by three species. The most extensively represented natm-al orders 
dXQ Legimims(» (21 sp.) and Qraminm (20 sp.) ; followed by EuphorUacecti 
(14 sp.) and Gompositm (10 sp.) ; Malvacsce, (9 sp.), Ruhkmce, and Gijp&racm 
(each 8 sp.) ; Gonvolvulacm and Fungi (Hymmomijcetes) (each 7 sp.) ; Rvtamey 
Gmurbitacm and Solmacece. (each 6 sp.) ; Acanthacem and Vrticace(& (each 
5 sp.) ; Verlmacme (4 sp.). 
The land-mark height of the islands of the group is usually about 60 feet; 
none of them exceed this. Deducting, therefore, the 12 to 15 feet of coral forma¬ 
tion that composes the islands, we find that none of the trees in the group are 
more than 45 to 50 feet high. The tallest trees, and those that in all the 
inhabited islands, except Kadamum, form at the same time the bulk of the 
vegetation, are the coco-nuts, which are cultivated ; the majority of the 
remaining arboreal forms are also cultivated species, most of them being fruit- 
trees like Anma murimki, Artocar^is indsa, Mangifera indica, Tamarindus 
indica, or trees like Maringa pt&rygospmna, with an immediate, or, like Seshania 
grandiji&ra, with an indirect economic interest. There are only five arboreal 
species that are at all likely to be truly “ iudigenous ” in the accepted sense of 
the term ; four of these—the Tliespesia, the Galophyllum, the Pisonia and 
Terminalia Gatappa—?iXQ probably sea-introduced, the fifth (Ficus nitida) is 
perhaps a bird-introduced species ; four, however, as it happens, are knovm to 
be planted by the inhabitants at least in some of the islands, though three of 
them are undoubtedly “ wild” as well as planted. 
In the interior of the majority of the islands there is no true jungle, the whole 
cultivable area being occupied by coco-nut groves with small patches of garden- 
land (Teat) ; on this account there is, as might be expected, only a flora of 
tropical cultivated species, with the usual tropical weeds of cultivation and Indian 
garden escapes reported from the centre or the islands, and with some common 
Indian Ocean littoral species from the sea-fence that fines the shore. In the 
interior of the smaller uninhabited islands, such as Bitra and Bangaro, a dense 
jungle does, indeed, exist ; it is, however, composed of littoral species that have 
spread inward from the beach on both sides of the island tiU the two sea-fences 
have met and coalesced in the middle. In these islands the jungle is shrubby, 
hardly even subarboreal. The only island where there are considerable tracts of 
unoccupied ground, and where a true interior jungle exists, is Kadamum. Here 
also the jungle is of the nature of “ scrub,” and though there are present in it 
some quite characteristic inland forms, such as Pavetta, Plmrostylia and 
Flacourtia, which are not reported from the other islands, these do not exclusively 
compose the central jungle; characteristically “ littoral” species, Premm, Morinda 
and the like, enter largely mto its formation. 
379 
