Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-05-22
WEST INDIAN PLANTS
NEW YORK BoTANISTS COLLECT
INTERESTING SPECIMENS.
Vegetation of the Island Of st.
Kits - Ferns of
Jamaica.

DIR. N. L. Britton Of the Botanical Mu-
scum talked most Interestingly of the vege-
tation of the West Indies in the lecture
course which is being given at the museum.
The museum has been devoting itself to the
botanical exploration of these islands for
two years past. keeping some one in the
field most of the time. and constantly add
ing fine specimens to the greenhouses. The
richness of the West Indies as botanical
field is out of all proportion to their extent,
for scarcely any other portion of the earth S
surface produces SO many species not found
elsewhere on the globe. On the little is
land of st. Kits, for instance, not so large
as Staten Island, fifteen species have been
discovered which are not known outside
this little bit of tropic earth. In the noun
tainS of Jamaica fifty-six species have been
discovered not known elsewhere. The most
curious feature of the case Is that no two
islands are alike, and one will have plants
quite unknown in the next one. This makes
1t necessary to explore each one separately
and carefully, in order to know the whole.
Difference in Flora.
In all the islands there is marked diff
ference between the vegetation of the
mountains and the coast. The mountains
intercept the trade winds and other air cur
rents, and the result is a tropical jungle,
while often the coast, as in the case of the
southern coast of Cuba, will more nearly
resemble the arid plains of the southwest.
In an island as small as Porto Rico the
rainfall varies from 1870 inches in some
sections to scarcely more than 40 inches,
which is the rainfall of New York. The
soils, too, are formed simply of the disin-
tegration Of the rock of which the island
is composed in distinction to the soil of the
mainland, where the icefoes of the glacial
ind 1n 1S
of widely separated territories. These con-
ditions are probably responsible for the
unique botanical conditions often found.
In many respects, however the islands
resemble one another. In landing upon the
sandy beach of any one Of them the sand
dunes would be found covered with mass
of morning glory vines, single plants often
creeping yards in length. The stiff spikes
of Spanish bayonet, tree some thirty feet
high, with bayonet-like leaves, also guard
every coast line, while the sea grape, with
Its great tropical leaves and its foot-long
punches of grape-lke fruit, is a striking
Kits, where fire wood is scarce, this sea
grape furnishes the only fuel they have to
some twenty thousand colored people.
st. Thomas.
This is the harbor for the sake of which
our government attempted to purchase the
Danish West Indies last year. said DR..
Britton, as he threw picture of st. Thorn
as on the screen.
1T is the best harbor east Of Cuba. The
entrance is not more than 1000 feet from
shore to shore, and it would securely
shelter a fleet ten times the size of our
North Atlantic squadron
Dr. Britton commended in the highest
terms the work of the botanical experiment
stations in the British West Indian islands
'They have been established by the home
government" said he, Ito investigate the
botany of the islands, study plant diseases
and introduce new and profitable methods
of agriculture to people. Such a sta
ton in Cuba would be worth millions to
that island in the next ten years for the
agricultural and horticultural methods in
Cuba are primitive in the extreme
In every river where the salt water meets
the fresh will be found the mangrove
swamps, which help to build up the soil.
The mangrove has very curious habit of
terminating it's young plant on it's trunk,
whence it drops off and takes root in the
swamp below, an extremely rare practice
among plants. Another plant peculiar in
it's habits of reproduction is the bamboo.
1t is really great grass, the largest of all
the grasses, growing sixty feet high on the
hillsides and walls of the ravines. So in
frequently does it flower and fruit that
many species are not even named botan-
ically, because It's blossoms and seeds have
never been seen. DR.. Britton asked a man
who had lived for many years beside a
bamboo grove If he had ever seen it flower.
The man replied that he had not, and that
1t was generally held in that region that
bamboos never Powered; much as an old
Jack Tar will assert that Mother Carey's
chickens never go to land, and hatch their
chickens under their wings.
"Of course, the bamboo does flower"
said the speaker, but at extremely long
and irregular intervals. A grove of them
was known in India which lived sixty years
without Towering, when suddenly it fruited
so profusely that the ground was covered
with the seed.
In the Island of jamaica he continued,
there are 500 different varieties of ferns,
all the way from plant less than an inch
high to a tree fern towering sixty feet
above the earth. You can get anything
you want in the fern line between those
two in jamaica