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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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.
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