Vol 3 Land Resource Inventory Report - Department of Environment ...

3.11 VASCULAR PLANTS OF THE FIJI ISLANDS
Plants are the power-house of life on earth. A comprehensive summary of floral exploration
of Fiji was prepared by A.C. Smith as part of his six-volume series, Flora itiensis Nova
(Smith, 1979). Despite Fiji being visited as early as 1643 by Abel Tasman, it was not until
another 200 years later that the first specimens were collected. In 1838, Captain Dumont
d‘Urville arrived in Fiji waters. Hombron, Jacquinot and Guillou collected plant specimens
mostly from Ovalau. Specimens from their collections are housed at Paris Herbarium (P),
with duplicates found in other major international herbaria. Around the time of Dumont
d‘Urville‘s visit, the United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842) led by Captain Wilkes
arrived in Fiji and about 600 specimens were said to have been collected (Stanton, 1975). The
botanist Asa Gray worked on the Fijian as well as other Pacific Islands specimens collected
by the US Exploring Expedition resulting in a series of published and unpublished works
(Gray, 1848-1874).
Other notable collections were made by Hinds and Barclay in 1840 (see publications by Hind
1842 and Bentham 1846). Also William Henry Harvey visited Fiji in 1855 and collected
specimens from Vanua Levu. Harvey‘s material was studied by Berthold Carl Seemann.
Seemann was one of the outstanding contributors to our knowledge on the Fiji flora with his
publication titled ‗The Flora Vitiensis‘ (Seeman, 1865-1873). During his
tenure in Fiji, Seemann collected well over 1000 specimens.
Albert Charles Smith collected Fijian specimens in 1933-1934, with subsequent visits from
1947-1948, 1953-1954, 1967 and 1969. These resulted in a number of publications including
Smith (1934, 1935, 1936, 1950, 1979-1991). His modern treatise of the Fiji flora provided the
baseline for all current research and has proven to be the bible on the plants of Fiji. Another
notable contribution was made by Bayard Parham who established the Fiji Herbarium
(SUVA). His work was published by his son John Parham (1964, 1972). Over the years a
number of researchers had focussed their efforts on specific groups, such as Fuller‘s (1997)
research on indigenous palms and Bush (1997) on endemic gymnosperms. Tuiwawa (1998)
carried out tree-forest research at Waisoi, Namosi in the interior of Viti Levu where over 370
species were identified in an 8 sq km area. The majority of species were native with just over
half classed as endemics (56%). Watkins (1992) carried out surveys at Nadarivatu and listed
599 species. Dick Watling published the Palms of the Fiji Islands in 2005, where 31 species
were illustrated of which 25 were native.
The most recent review of the floral diversity of Fiji was by Tuiwawa (1998), where 2,530
vascular plant species were attributed to the Fiji flora. A large proportion of these species
(63%) were considered native species, of which 56 % were found exclusive to Fiji. The
remaining flora was introduced species (936 documented cases), of which a third had become
naturalised. It is suspected that well over 2,000 plant species may have been introduced either
deliberate or accidental but are not documented.
Plant species are distributed throughout all known habitats of the Fiji Islands. It is said that
prior to settlement of the islands, they were covered with closed-canopy forest (Watling,
2005). Over half of this primary forest remains somewhat intact with varying degree of
impact or degradation. The lowland rainforest is one area where there has been a lot of
disturbance due human settlement. This area straddles the coastal region extending upwards
to about 600 m. Plant species vary from shrubs to trees 30 m tall. The upland rainforest
occurs above the lowland forests area (above 600 m elevation) and can be categorised as wet
264