WCP2965

[1]¹

Radda (chianti) Prov. di Siena

13 Sept[ember] 1909

Dear Sir,

I have received your letter in my country house, here, far from Florence, where having no books I am in the impossibility of giving you a satisfactory answer to your questions, but I am going to write to some friends and I hope to be soon able to send you some precise informations about them. It is very well known the number of species of Phanerogams of whole Italy and of the partial floras of Sicily, Sardinia and Tuscany and of some of the smaller Islands.

[2] As to New-Guinea it is a more difficult matter. Only relatively small portions of that land have been explored and the collections have not yet been thoroughly worked.

I have collected about 1000 sp[ecies]. Of Phanerogams in N.W. New-Guinea but I have only very partially explored the mainland near Sorong, Mt. Arfak, some of the Islands of the Geelwink bay and collected a few species only in Humboldt’s bay.

I[n] the south part of the island the Dutchs have recently explored the coasts and made an attempt to reach the snowy (?) mountains [3]² of the Charles Louis chain; and I have just in the press the descriptions of the Palms collected during that expedition. Some important collections have been made in British New-Guinea and I have described the Palms of that region ("Malesia" vol.I)³. But no doubt the best known part (botanically) of New-Guinea is the German Kaiser Wilhelmsland, and there is a Flora of that Region published by K. Schuumann and Lauterbach (Fl. Deutschen Schutzq. in der Südsee)⁴ and a recent supplement to that flora by [4] Lauterbach.

As to the number of species which compose the flora of New-Guinea is, I think, quite impossible at the present day, to give even an approximation cipher. The plants already enumerated in the books as growing in New Guinea must be many but I ha[ve] no idea about their number as I have now limited my botanical studies only to Palms. Judging from the grownd I have explored, it seems to me that in a measured area the [5]⁵ number of species of plants growing in New-Guinea is inferior to that, which in an equal area may be found in Borneo or in the Malay Peninsula, but on the whole the number of papuan species of plants is not, probably, inferior to that of Borneo. The reason is, I think, that in many Genera the number of highly highly characteristics, or 1^st grade species of plants in New-Guinea is, apparently ^really inferior to that of Borneo; for in New-Guinea [6] in several genera a few 1^st grade species are represented in the various regions by forms which do not offer striking differentiating characters among them, but nevertheless we are led to consider as distinct species. For instance in Borneo the Genus Areca is represented by several highly characteristics species, while in New-Guinea there is only one type of Areca, but this is represented in the Islands of the Geelwink bay, in the Kaiser Wilhelmsland [7]⁶ in Dutch and British New-Guinea by as many very near allied species, and consequently in New-Guinea and Borneo there is the same number of Arecas, but the Arecas of Borneo are very distinct, or 1^st grade species, while the Arecas of New-Guinea are all very closely related or 2^nd grade species, and evidently derived from a single type.

I am very sorry of not being able of giving you fuller informations about the subject in which you are interested.

[8] In the hope that you may be able to decipher my English,

I beg to remain | very truly yours | O Beccari [signature]⁷