NATURAL HISTORY
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Flora. It is not possible to make any distinction between the trees of Hong Kong and those of the neighbouring southern parts of Kwangtung Province. The principal trees in the Colony are pine, Chinese banyan and camphor, to which a large number of others have been added since the area came under British administration, the most common being casuarina, eucalyptus and Flamboyant. Many farms and villages are surrounded by fine old fung-shui groves, mostly banyans and camphors. There may also be clumps of thorny bamboos. From a distance, some of the mountain slopes seem bare of any plant covering except grass, but on closer observation the water courses are seen to be marked by narrow bands of low shrubby growth and scattered trees.
The principal locally-grown fruits include lychee, lungngan, wong pei, loquat, pomelo, tangerine, banana, papaya, pineapple, custard apple, guava and Chinese varieties of plum and pear. The Portuguese originally introduced papaya, pineapple, custard apple and guava from South America some time after the foundation of Macau. The tangerine is native to South China and was introduced to the West in its turn in the seventeenth century when the Portuguese transplanted it to Tangier, which was then under their control.
The flora of Hong Kong Island has been fully, though not completely, described in G. B. Bentham's Flora Hongkongensis, published in 1861, and in Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong by S. T. Dunn and W. J. Tutcher, 1912. Less comprehensive works include a small book, remarkable for its excellent drawings, by L. Gibbs, entitled Common Hong Kong Ferns; an illustrated but unfinished series, The Flowering Plants of Hong Kong by A. H. Crook; Plants of Lan Tau Island by F. A. McClure, which appeared in the Lingnan University Science Bulletin series for 1931; Familiar Wild Flowers of Hongkong, illustrated with photo- graphs by V. H. C. Jarrett, published in 1937; and many papers published in The Hong Kong Naturalist. Since the war three official publications have appeared in the series 'Food and flowers', giving amongst other information articles on some of the more conspicuous wild plants of the Colony.
The flora of the Colony is tropical, but this is about the northern limit of tropical flora. Alternation between hot humid summers and cool dry winters causes tropical plants to lie