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NATURAL HISTORY
and was introduced to the west in the seventeenth century when the Portuguese transplanted it to Tangier, then under their control.
The flora of Hong Kong Island has been fully, though not com- pletely, 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 containing, amongst other information, articles on some of the more conspicuous wild plants of the Colony. A comprehensive list of all the known wild plants of Hong Kong has recently been compiled and is available from the Colonial Herbarium.
The flora of the Colony is tropical, although at about the northern limit of tropical flora. Alternation between hot humid summers and cool dry winters causes tropical plants to lie dormant during winter and encourages the development of large flowers borne at definite seasons of the year. As a result of this, a genus tends to produce a greater wealth of flowers of large size in Hong Kong than it does in other equatorial countries.
Hong Kong is famous for its great variety of flowering plants, many of which are exceptional for the beauty or fragrance of their blossoms. As might be expected most species flower during spring and early summer. Some are easy to place in their correct families --for example, the common wild Gordonia looks like, and is related to, the camellia, and the wild roses are unmistakably roses. But most are not so easy to name. They include a Magnolia, a Michelia with large white flowers, a Rhodoleia with groups of rose- madder coloured petals surrounded by golden bracts, an Illicium with cherry pink flowers and star-shape fruits, and a Tutcheria with large camellia-like flowers, white tinged with gold bearing masses of tangerine orange stamens. This latter is a tall tree with glossy foliage, described as a distinct genus in 1908 in honour