The First Era of the Flowering Plants, being the Age of the Endemic Genera.
With the above preliminary remarks I pass on to the next stage in the history of the stocking of these islands with their plants. The age of the ferns and lycopods is left behind, and it is assumed that the next era is mainly indicated by those genera of phanerogams that are now peculiar to their respective groups. In this connection by far the most interesting of the three regions, the Hawaiian, the Tahitian or East Polynesian, and the Fijian, is that of Hawaii, which, as before observed, is distinguished from the groups of the Fijian and Tahitian regions, or, in other words, from all the oceanic archipelagoes of the tropical Pacific, by its large number of endemic genera.
Peculiar genera of shrubby and arborescent Compositæ and of arborescent Lobeliaceæ form the most striking characteristics of the endemic genera, and therefore of the ancient flora of Hawaii. It is in this connection of singular interest to remark that of the three endemic genera of the Tahitian flora one is an arborescent genus of the Compositæ, and the other two are shrubby genera of the Lobeliaceæ. There are, therefore, indications here of an ancient insular flora of the Pacific, characterised mainly by the prevalence of Compositæ and Lobeliaceæ. It is, however, remarkable that not only are no endemic genera of these orders known from Fiji or from the adjacent groups of Samoa and Tonga, but that the Lobeliaceæ are not represented at all, whilst amongst the Fijian Compositæ, with the exception of Lagenophora, the genera display no endemic element as far as the data at my disposal indicate.
The problem we are brought face to face with is clearly stated by Mr. Hemsley in the Introduction to the Botany of the Challenger Expedition (p. 68). “In Polynesia as elsewhere,” he remarks, “the Compositæ more particularly are perplexing to the botanical geographer, for although they have their greatest affinities in America, as well as the sub-arboreous Lobeliaceæ, so numerous in the Sandwich Islands, yet the bulk of the vegetation seems to have been derived from the Australo-Asiatic region.”
In attempting to approach this problem I do so from the standpoint of dispersal. There are so many intricate questions bound up with the systematic position of these genera that in dealing with them the student of plant-distribution would require the capacities and opportunities of the eminent botanist who dealt with the distribution of ten thousand species of Compositæ. On such ground, therefore, and only under the guidance of others, I will lightly tread.