Reminiscences of Fern Collecting in Fiji

Abstract

During the present period of turmoil in the southwestern Pacific, botanists who have worked in any of the archipelagoes of that region are prone to wonder what changes will result from the war. There is, fortunately, no longer a possibility that the southwestern groups will pass from the control of friendly countries and become closed to occidental explorers, as have the mandated Micronesian islands. It is now only a question of time until the Pacific will again be at peace and all its islands open to further scientific exploration. Many of these archipelagoes, for example the Solomons and the New Hebrides, are very nearly unexplored from a botanical standpoint; others, such as Fiji, are much better known. Although not in the actual combat area, Fiji is strategically important for its position; from a phytogeographic viewpoint also it is highly important, lying at the edge of the supposed old continental shelf and in the route of major plant movements from Papuasia eastward. It is just ten years ago that, as a Bishop Museum Fellow in Yale University, I made a collection of plants in Fiji.1 Herbarium studies in the interval have kept my