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Economic Botany Collections
The New Guinea Collection
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| Drift seed |
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A large number of the items donated from the H.M.S. Challenger expedition are drift seeds, collected in the mouth of a large river where H.N. Moseley describes a large amount of floating debris in his book ‘Notes by a Naturalist on the Challenger’. 'On February 22nd, at noon, the ship was about 70 miles north-east of Point D'Urville, where the great Ambernoh River, the largest river in New Guinea, runs into the sea. The river probably rises in the Charles Louis Mountains on the opposite side of New Guinea, which reach up to the great altitude of 16,700 feet. So large is this river that even at this great distance from its mouth, we found the sea blocked with the drift-wood brought down by it… 'Various fruits of trees and other fragments were abundant, usually floating, confined in the midst of the small aggregations into which the floating timber was almost everywhere gathered. Amongst them were the usual littoral seeds, those of two species of Pandanus, and of a Puzzle-seed (Xylocarpus), fruits of Barringtonia and of Ipomoea pes-capri… 'But besides these fruits of littoral plants, there were seeds of 40 or 50 species of more inland plants. Very small seeds were as abundant as large ones, the surface scum being full of them, so that they could be scooped up in quantities with a fine net. ' Almost exactly the same text appears in the narrative of the cruise of the Challenger – a two part volume summarising the details of the journey and including much anthropological information. However, in this version the river is named the ‘Mámberan’. This particular seed, Barringtonia racemosa, is widely distributed from south and east Africa to the Pacific. Back to New Guinea: Early Explorers |
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