Pioneer Plant Geography : The Phytogeographical Researches of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker

J. D. HooKER was a man of very great energy and ability and was extremely versatile. Though concerned with only one aspect of his professionallife in the preparation of this work, the presentwriter has been greatly impressed by the width of HooKER's interests, by his powers of observation, and by his untiring devotion to botanical investigations over a wide range of what are now often regarded as almost separate sciences. Nevertheless, HooKER was primarily a taxonomist and his largest works are entirely or very largely systematic in the restricted sense. This is true not only for the Flora of British India and for the Genera Plantarum (with G. BENTHAM) but also for the "Antarctic" Floras of Tasmania and New Zealand, to which were attached the renowned "Introductions" with phytogeographical and other data and which are referred to in detail below. HooKER's phytogeography is essentially "floristic". He wrote mainly before the word "ecology" ( or "oecology") was invented and certainly before this branch ofbiology, with its frequent bearings on phytogeography, had attained its modern contents and aims. The same is true of cytogenetics. DARWIN's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859 and much (not all) of HooKER's phytogeographical work antedates the general acceptance of the theory of evolution. Indeed, one of the features of special interest of our studies is that the "Hookerian phytogeographical period" strides across the "pre-evolutionary" and the "postevolutionary" epochs of botany. HooKER was not the faunder of phytogeography. This, or a similar title, has sometimes been given to A. VON HuMBOLDT (1769-1859). It is, however, true to say that HooKER's researches in plant distribution were of first-class importance because they were largely devoted to botanically hitherto little known, or even quite unknown, areas, were mostly concerned with countries he had hirnself visited, and were based on his own detailed taxonomic investigations. It is worth recalling the following statement by J. D. HooKER himself: "When still a child, my father used to take me excursions in the Highlands, where I fished a good deal, but also botanised; and well I remernher on one occasion, that, after returning home, I built up by a heap of stones a representation of one of the mountains I had ascended, and stuck upon it specimens of the mosses I had collected on it, at heights relative to those at which I had gathered them. This was the dawn of my love for geographical botany" (Quoted in L. HuxLEY, vol. 1, p. 5). The problern of how best to present J. D. HooKER's phytogeogra- phical researches had to be given much thought. To have arranged INTRODUCTION 5 hand, it is not claimed that the list is anythlng approaching a complete bibliography of the phytogeography of the areas investigated by HooKER. It is, however, probable that by using these references, and the references they themselves contain, a fairly complete bibliography of the plant geography of the areas could be compiled with a minimum of trouble. The debt of those who have prepared textbooks of plant geography to J. D. HooKER is great-if not always acknowledged. Many of his pioneer investigations have now been absorbed in generally accepted knowledge together, of course, with the investigations of other research workers. The following text-books are generally well-known but the list may be useful for students since many of them refer to problemsfirstdealt with by HooKER: Front Matter....Pages N2-XII Introduction....Pages 1-5 The Distribution of Arctic Plants....Pages 6-15 Syria and Palestine....Pages 16-21 India....Pages 22-78 Africa....Pages 79-104 North America....Pages 105-120 The Galapagos Islands....Pages 121-133 Antarctica....Pages 134-196 Miscellaneous and General....Pages 197-221 Summary and Conclusions....Pages 222-231 Back Matter....Pages 232-267