Fungi and Lichens from the Island of Guam

Abstract

With the opening up of the Pacific to trade and travel, the natural sequence of events brings about a more universal interest, both general and scientific, regarding the region. From a botanical standpoint our knowledge is as yet extremely limited. A few isolated localities have been worked over to some extent, but even in these places much remains to be accomplished. In the Marianne Islands, of which Guam is the largest, only a few botanical collections of any extent have been made. These islands are located, approximately, between 13? to 20? north latitude and I43? to I46? east longitude. The island of Guam itself is about 46 kilometers long and I6 wide at its broadest part; this, however, is not in a central location as the island is more or less dumb-bell shaped and only about 5 kilometers broad in the region of Agafia, the chief town. From San Francisco by way of Honolulu, as the boats ordinarily travel, the islands are about 8,670 kilometers distant and are about 2,440 kilometers east from Manila. As is true of a large percentage of the Pacific islands, the Marianne Islands are of volcanic origin. The island of Guam was discovered by Ferdinand Magellan, during his voyage of circumnavigation, on March 6, 1521, a short time before his fatal visit to the Philippines. The first botanical collection was not made until 1792, when Thaddeus Haenke and Luis Nee of the Malaspina Expedition, with which they were connected as botanists, visited the islands. They spent between February 12th and 24th at Guam but there is no record of any fungi having been preserved by them from that place. In fact, but three fungi have been reported as being collected by them on the entire voyage. Two of these were gathered in Mexico and the other in the Philippine Islands. With this list might also be mentioned the fact that nineteen lichens from the American continent, mostly from Peru and Chili, make up the entire 4