CHAPTER XXIV

Summary

The northern coast of Africa, and the range of the Atlas generally, may be regarded as a zone of transition, where the plants of southern Europe are mingled with those peculiar to the country; half the plants of northern Africa are also found in the other countries on the shores of the Mediterranean. Of 60 trees and 248 shrubs which grow there, 100 only are peculiar to Africa, and about 18 of these belong to its tropical flora. There are about six times as many herbaceous plants as there are trees and shrubs; and in the Atlas Mountains, as in other chains, the perennial plants are much more numerous than annuals. Evergreens predominate, and are the same as those on the other shores of the Mediterranean. The pomegranate, the locust tree, the oleander, and the palmetto abound; and the cistus tribe give a distinct character to the flora. The sandarach, or thuia articulata, peculiar to the northern side of the Atlas Mountains and to Cyrenaica, yields close-grained hard timber, used for the ceiling of mosques, and is supposed to be the shittim-wood of Scripture. The Atlas produces seven or eight species of oak, various pines, especially the pinus maritima, and forests of the Aleppo pine in Algiers. The sweet - scented arborescent heath and Erica scoparia are native here, also in the Canary Islands and the Azores, where the tribe of house-leeks characterizes the botany.