Phanerogams

Of the 907 phanerogams (flowering plants) recorded to date in the Madeira archipelago, 635 are native or apparently native, and 272 are naturalised or frequently cultivated. The group of native species comprises 505 dicotyledons, 126 monocotyledons and 4 gymnosperms; the group of evidently introduced species comprises 218 dicotyledons, 53 monocotyledons and 1 gymnosperm.

The archipelago has 443 annual phanerogams, of which 374 are dicotyledons and 69 monocotyledons. The native phanerogams among them are represented by 289 dicotyledons and 51 monocotyledons, and the introduced ones by 85 dicotyledons and 18 monocotyledons. Of the 464 perennial phanerogams, 205 are native and 169 introduced; the native phanerogams comprise 216 dicotyledons, 75 monocotyledons and 4 gymnosperms, and the introduced ones 133 dicotyledons, 35 monocotyledons and 1 gymnosperm. Among the native perennial phanerogams there are 106 species of trees, shrubs and subshrubs.

Among the 272 introduced phanerogams, 80 dicotyledons, 18 monocotyledons and 1 gymnosperm are well naturalised; all the remaining species are cultivated on a large scale, adventive, or still poorly established in the archipelago. Among the naturalised dicotyledons there are 34 annual and 46 perennial species; among the monocotyledons, 7 annual and 11 perennial; and among the gymnosperms, 1 perennial.

Our region has 102 endemic species and 54 that are shared between the Madeira archipelago and other groups of islands in the Atlantic. Of the former, 70 are Madeiran, 5 belong to Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), 1 to Ilhéu Chão (‘flat islet’), 1 to Bugio, 10 to Madeira, Porto Santo and the Desertas, 10 to Madeira and Porto Santo, and 5 to Madeira and the Desertas. Of the latter, 3 occur in the archipelagos of Madeira, the Canary Islands and the Azores, 41 in the archipelagos of Madeira and the Canary Islands, 9 in the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, and 1 in the archipelagos of Madeira, the Canary Islands and Cape Verde. All these species, whose native status is beyond any dispute, are genuine representatives of the primitive flora of Madeira. This flora, it is to be believed, became established in our region during the Tertiary period, carried by birds, by the winds, by ocean currents and even by certain insects.

The study of Madeiran plant fossils shows no evidence of any local floristic evolution. Many of the plants found in the fossil deposit of São Jorge, on the northern coast of Madeira, are represented in the native flora of the present day. And if there were changes in the morphological characters of other species of our primitive vegetation, it is not credible that those changes were so profound as to give rise to new specific forms of an endemic or peculiar character.

These forms, in our view, did not arise from the slow or sudden transformation of other species. If they now characterise the Madeira archipelago, it is because the conditions compatible with their existence, once found over large areas, continued from a certain period onwards to survive only within the narrow limits of our floral region.

The most complete list of the phanerogams of the Madeira region was published by Carlos A. Meneses in 1914 under the title Flora do Arquipelago da Madeira. However, owing to the little care taken over its revision, this work contains a number of errors that considerably mar it. The description accompanying Thlaspi arvense does not refer to that species but to Draba muralis; in Lotus argenteus the leaflets are not always notched; in Lotus Loweanus the leaflets are villous rather than pubescent; and in Senecio incrassatus the leaves are deeply pinnatifid. The plane tree cultivated in Madeira is Platanus orientalis, not P. occidentalis, and as regards the genus Scrophularia, the number of species recorded in the said work may have to be reduced. Sambucus Ebulus is not a subshrub, although its annual stems are sometimes almost woody.

The phanerogams of Madeira were also studied by the botanists Bornmuller, Britten, Brown, Cosson, Holl, Richard Thomas Lowe and Vahl. Among those who made collections of plants here, now distributed among several European museums, the names of Joseph Banks, the Baron of Castelo de Paiva, Lemann, Lippold, Gilbert Mandon, Francis Masson, Moniz, Norman and Webb should not be forgotten.