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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By This Unceasing
Action Of Organic Force The Empire Of Flora Is Extended Over
Islands Ravaged By Volcanoes.
On surveying the different zones of the vegetation of Teneriffe, we
perceive that the whole island may be considered as a forest of
laurels, arbutus, and pines, containing in its centre a naked and
rocky soil, unfit either for pasturage or cultivation.
M.
Broussonnet observes, that the archipelago of the Canaries may be
divided into two groups of islands; the first comprising Lancerota
and Forteventura, the second Teneriffe, Canary, Gomera, Ferro, and
Palma. The appearance of the vegetation essentially differs in
these two groups. The eastern islands, Lancerota and Forteventura,
consist of extensive plains and mountains of little elevation; they
have very few springs, and bear the appearance, still more than the
other islands, of having been separated from the continent. The
winds blow in the same direction, and at the same periods: the
Euphorbia mauritanica, the Atropa frutescens, and the arborescent
Sonchus, vegetate there in the loose sands, and afford, as in
Africa, food for camels. The western group of the Canaries presents
a more elevated soil, is more woody, and is watered by a greater
number of springs.
Though the whole archipelago contains several plants found also in
Portugal,* (* M. Willdenouw and myself found, among the plants of
the peak of Teneriffe, the beautiful Satyrium diphyllum (Orchis
cordata, Willd.) which Mr. Link discovered in Portugal. The
Canaries have, in common with the Flora of the Azores, not the
Dicksonia culcita, the only arborescent heath found at the
thirty-ninth degree of latitude, but the Asplenium palmatum, and
the Myrica Faya. This last tree is met with in Portugal, in a wild
state. Count Hoffmansegg has seen very old trunks of it; but it was
doubtful whether it was indigenous, or imported into that part of
our continent. In reflecting on the migrations of plants, and on
the geological possibility, that lands sunk in the ocean may have
heretofore united Portugal, the Azores, the Canaries, and the chain
of Atlas, we conceive, that the existence of the Myrica Faya in
western Europe is a phenomenon at least as striking as that of the
pine of Aleppo would be at the Azores.), in Spain, at the Azores,
and in the north-west of Africa, yet a great number of species, and
even some genera, are peculiar to Teneriffe, to Porto Santo, and to
Madeira. Such are the Mocanera, the Plocama, the Bosea, the
Canarina, the Drusa, and the Pittosporum. A form which may be
called northern, that of the cruciform plant (Among the small
number of cruciform species contained in the Flora of Teneriffe, we
shall here mention Cheiranthus longifolius, l'Herit.; Ch.
fructescens, Vent.; Ch. scoparius, Brouss.; Erysimum bicorne,
Aiton; Crambe strigosa, and C. laevigata, Brouss.), is much rarer
in the Canaries than in Spain and in Greece. Still farther to the
south, in the equinoctial regions of both continents, where the
mean temperature of the air rises above twenty-two degrees, the
cruciform plants are scarcely ever to be seen.
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