ENG-1962 — Page 392

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NATURAL HISTORY

Flora. It is not possible to make any distinction between the trees of Hong Kong and those of neighbouring southern China. The principal trees in the Colony are pine, Chinese banyan and camphor. A large number of others have been added since the area came under British administration, the most common being casuarina, eucalyptus and Flamboyant. The traditional Chinese belief ('fung shui') that the disposition of buildings, graves, trees, water and mountains may affect a person's fortune and destiny, has done much to preserve fine groves of trees, mostly camphor, banyans and clumps of bamboo, around many farms and villages in the New Territories. Some of the mountain slopes, from a distance, seem bare of any plant covering except grass, but on closer observation it can be seen that the water courses are marked by narrow bands of low shrubby growth and scattered trees.

The principal locally-grown fruits include lychee, lung ngan, wong pei, loquat, pomelo, tangerine, banana, papaya, pineapple, custard apple, guava and Chinese varieties of plum and pear. The Portuguese originally introduced the papaya, the pineapple, the custard apple and the guava from South America some time after the foundation of Macau. The tangerine is a native of South China 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 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 containing, amongst other information, articles on some of the more conspicuous wild plants of the Colony.