Galapagos Travel Blog

The botany of this group is fully as interesting as the zoology.
Dr. J. Hooker will soon publish in the "Linnean Transactions" a
full account of the Flora, and I am much indebted to him for the
following details. Of flowering plants there are, as far as at
present is known, 185 species, and 40 cryptogamic species, making
together 225; of this number I was fortunate enough to bring home
193. Of the flowering plants, 100 are new species, and are probably
confined to this archipelago. Dr. Hooker conceives that, of the
plants not so confined, at least 10 species found near the
cultivated ground at Charles Island have been imported. It is, I
think, surprising that more American species have not been
introduced naturally, considering that the distance is only between
500 and 600 miles from the continent, and that (according to
Collnet, page 58) drift-wood, bamboos, canes, and the nuts of a
palm, are often washed on the south-eastern shores. The proportion
of 100 flowering plants out of 185 (or 175 excluding the imported
weeds) being new, is sufficient, I conceive, to make the Galapagos
Archipelago a distinct botanical province; but this Flora is not
nearly so peculiar as that of St. Helena, nor, as I am informed by
Dr. Hooker, of Juan Fernandez. The peculiarity of the Galapageian
Flora is best shown in certain families;--thus there are 21 species
of Compositae, of which 20 are peculiar to this archipelago; these
belong to twelve genera, and of these genera no less than ten are
confined to the archipelago! Dr. Hooker informs me that the Flora
has an undoubted Western American character; nor can he detect in
it any affinity with that of the Pacific. If, therefore, we except
the eighteen marine, the one fresh-water, and one land-shell, which
have apparently come here as colonists from the central islands of
the Pacific, and likewise the one distinct Pacific species of the
Galapageian group of finches, we see that this archipelago, though
standing in the Pacific Ocean, is zoologically part of America.