Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In The Third Zone (Beginning At Nine Hundred Toises Of Absolute
Height), The Last Groups Of Arbutus, Of Myrica Faya,
And of that
beautiful heath known to the natives by the name of Texo, appear.
This zone, four hundred toises
In breadth, is entirely filled by a
vast forest of pines, among which mingles the Juniperus cedro of
Broussonnet. The leaves of these pines are very long and stiff, and
they sprout sometimes by pairs, but oftener by threes in one
sheath. Having had no opportunity of examining the fructification,
we cannot say whether this species, which has the appearance of the
Scotch fir, is really different from the eighteen species of pines
with which we are already acquainted in Europe. M. Decandolle is of
opinion that the pine of Teneriffe is equally distinct from the
Pinus atlantica of the neighbouring mountains of Mogador, and from
the pine of Aleppo,* (* Pinus halepensis. M. Decandolle observes,
that this species, which is not found in Portugal, but grows on the
Mediterranean shores of France, Spain, and Italy, in Asia Minor,
and in Barbary, would be better named Pinus mediterranea. It
composes the principal part of the pine-forests of the south-east
of France, where Gouan and Gerard have confounded it with the Pinus
sylvestris. It comprehends the Pinus halepensis, Mill., Lamb., and
Desfont., and the Pinus maritima, Lamb.) which belongs to the basin
of the Mediterranean, and does not appear to have passed the
Pillars of Hercules. We met with these last pines on the slope of
the Peak, near twelve hundred toises above the level of the sea. In
the Cordilleras of New Spain, under the torrid zone, the Mexican
pines extend to the height of two thousand toises. Notwithstanding
the similarity of structure existing between the different species
of the same genus of plants, each of them requires a certain degree
of temperature and rarity in the ambient air to attain its due
growth. If in temperate climates, and wherever snow falls, the
uniform heat of the soil be somewhat above the mean heat of the
atmosphere, it is probable that at the height of Portillo the roots
of the pines draw their nourishment from a soil, in which, at a
certain depth, the thermometer rises at most to nine or ten
degrees.
The fourth and fifth zones, the regions of the retama and the
gramina, occupy heights equal to the most inaccessible summits of
the Pyrenees. It is the sterile part of the island where heaps of
pumice-stone, obsidian, and broken lava, form impediments to
vegetation. We have already spoken of those flowery tufts of alpine
broom (Spartium nubigenum), which form oases amidst a vast desert
of ashes. Two herbaceous plants, the Scrophularia glabrata and the
Viola cheiranthifolia, advance even to the Malpays. Above a turf
scorched by the heat of an African sun, an arid soil is overspread
by the Cladonia paschalis. Towards the summit of the Peak the
Urceolarea and other plants of the family of the lichens, help to
work the decomposition of the scorified matter.
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