It has a tall, stout stem, sometimes more than three feet high, the
root leaves are eighteen inches long, and it bears several whorls of
cowslip-like flowers, instead of a terminal cluster only. The forest
trees, gnarled and dwarfed to the dimensions of bushes, reach up to the
very rim of the old crater, but do not extend over the hollow on its
summit. Here we find a good deal of open ground, with thickets of
shrubby Artemisias and Gnaphaliums, like our southernwood and cudweed,
but six or eight feet high; while Buttercups, Violets, Whortleberries,
Sow-thistles, Chickweed, white and yellow Cruciferae, Plantain, and
annual grasses everywhere abound. Where there are bushes and shrubs,
the St. John's-wort and Honeysuckle grow abundantly, while the Imperial
Cowslip only exhibits its elegant blossoms under the damp shade of the
thickets.
Mr. Motley, who visited the mountain in the dry season, and paid much
attention to botany, gives the following list of genera of European
plants found on or near the summit:-- Two species of Violet, three of
Ranunculus, three of Impatiens, eight or ten of Rubus, and species of
Primula, Hypericum, Swertia, Convallaria (Lily of the Valley), Vaccinium
(Cranberry), Rhododendron, Gnaphalium, Polygonum, Digitalis (Foxglove),
Lonicera (Honeysuckle), Plantago (Rib-grass), Artemisia (Wormwood),
Lobelia, Oxalis (Wood-sorrel), Quercus (Oak), and Taxus (Yew). A few of
the smaller plants (Plantago major and lanceolata, Sonchus oleraceus,
and Artemisia vulgaris) are identical with European species.
The fact of a vegetation so closely allied to that of Europe occurring
on isolated mountain peaks, in an island south of the Equator, while all
the lowlands for thousands of miles around are occupied by a flora of
a totally different character, is very extraordinary; and has only
recently received an intelligible explanation. The Peak of Teneriffe,
which rises to a greater height and is much nearer to Europe, contains
no such Alpine flora; neither do the mountains of Bourbon and
Mauritius. The case of the volcanic peaks of Java is therefore somewhat
exceptional, but there are several analogous, if not exactly parallel
cases, that will enable us better to understand in what way the
phenomena may possibly have been brought about.
The higher peaks of the Alps, and even of the Pyrenees, contain a number
of plants absolutely identical with those of Lapland, but nowhere found
in the intervening plains. On the summit of the White Mountains, in
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