Cryptogamic
Plants Here Find A Most Congenial Climate.
In the Strait
of Magellan, as I have before remarked, the country appears
too cold and wet to allow of their arriving at perfection; but
in these islands, within the forest, the number of species and
great abundance of mosses, lichens, and small ferns, is quite
extraordinary.
[2] In Tierra del Fuego trees grow only on the
hill-sides; every level piece of land being invariably covered
by a thick bed of peat; but in Chiloe flat land supports the
most luxuriant forests. Here, within the Chonos Archipelago,
the nature of the climate more closely approaches that
of Tierra del Fuego than that of northern Chiloe; for every
patch of level ground is covered by two species of plants
(Astelia pumila and Donatia magellanica), which by their
joint decay compose a thick bed of elastic peat.
In Tierra del Fuego, above the region of woodland, the
former of these eminently sociable plants is the chief agent
in the production of peat. Fresh leaves are always succeeding
one to the other round the central tap-root, the lower
ones soon decay, and in tracing a root downwards in the peat,
the leaves, yet holding their place, can be observed passing
through every stage of decomposition, till the whole becomes
blended in one confused mass. The Astelia is assisted by a
few other plants, - here and there a small creeping Myrtus
(M. nummularia), with a woody stem like our cranberry and
with a sweet berry, - an Empetrum (E. rubrum), like our
heath, - a rush (Juncus grandiflorus), are nearly the only
ones that grow on the swampy surface.
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