The biological report of the Royal Society expedition to Tristan Da Cunha, 1962 - Part II. The terrestrial botany of the Tristan da Cunha Islands

The islands of Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible, Nightingale and Gough are alike in their climate and physiography, and also in their plant and animal life. They form a single biogeographical province, and the botany of all four islands will be dealt with here. The biotas of remote islands have long been considered of unusual interest, especially since the classical studies of Darwin in the Galapagos group. To the earlier explorers, their biological productions were matters only of curiosity and some speculation, but since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of species and Alfred Russel Wallace’s Island life, it has been realized that insular biotas present features of outstanding biological, evolutionary and geographic interest. A very great deal of attention has therefore been concentrated upon studies of the plant life of many oceanic islands, especially in Hawaii (Hillebrand, 1888; Campbell 1933; Skottsberg 1940), Islas Juan Fernandez (Skottsberg 1953-56) and other `high’ islands in the Pacific (references in Merrill 1947); in the Macaronesian islands, Bermuda and St Helena (Wallace 1895; Hemsley 1885; and later references in Turrill 1953, 1959) ; and in the scattered islands of the Southern Ocean (references in Wace 1960).