Abstract
THE recently issued part of the Scientific Reports of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911–14 (series iii., vol. vii., part 3), entitled “The Vascular Flora of Macquarie Island,” by T. F. Cheeseman, contains some important conclusions on the origin and distribution of the southern floras. Macquarie Island is situated on a narrow submarine ridge, surrounded by water more than 2000 fathoms deep, about 600 miles to the south-west of New Zealand. Its greatest length is barely twenty-one miles, and its greatest breadth under four miles. The island is little more than a range of mountains, the exposed ridges bare and wind-swept, while in the hollows are numerous shallow lakes, and the coastal hills are deeply scored by ravines. The climate is marked by a low summer temperature, much cloud and fog, and constant high winds. Dr. J. H. Scott, who visited the island in 1880, describes the landscape as barren in the extreme. There is not a tree or shrub, but long stretches of yellow tussock are varied with patches of the bright green Stilbocarpa polaris, the Macquarie Island cabbage, a plant resembling very fine rhubarb in growth, and of Pleurophyllum, a handsome Composite, with long, sage-green leaves and purple flowers. On the hillsides are globular masses of Azorella, forming dense, solid cushions often 4 ft. across. Near the hilltops is an abundant, growth of rich brown mosses. Hooker (“Flora Antarctica”) mentions seven species of flowering plants and one fern as known from the island. Mr. A. Hamilton, on whose collections the present account is based, spent nearly two years in the island, and Mr. Cheeseman now enumerates thirty flowering plants and four ferns. Of these, three o grasses are endemic, while of the remaining thirty-one species eighteen extend to New Zealand, and eleven of these are found in no other-country. A remarkable fact is that fifteen, or practically one-half of the non-endemic plants, are also found in Fuegia or the South Georgia to Kerguelen groups "of islands. Fuegia lies 4600 miles east of Macquarie Island, with no trace of land between, and South Georgia, further east, at about 5800 miles. Westward there is open sea until Kerguelen Island is reached, about 3250 miles distant. The extraordinarily scanty flora of the South Georgia-Kergueleri-Macquarie areas, which lie between parallels roughly corresponding with the north of England and the centre of France, is probably due mainly, as Prof. Rudrnose Brown has suggested, to the short summer with its comparatively low temperature; but the almost continuous westerly gales must also act adversely on plant growth.
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Flora of Macquarie Island . Nature 104, 101 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/104101a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/104101a0