Prior to European settlement, the Caribbean was dominated by forested ecosystems. The insular Caribbean has been considered a biodiversity hotspot. Although species diversity is lower than on mainland systems, endemism is high.
Species diversity is highest and endemism is lowest in Trinidad, which has a predominantly continental flora. Endemism is highest in Cuba and Hispaniola, the largest members of the Greater Antilles.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, trees and/or caribbean:
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Shea—they call him Scholar Jack—
Went down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers—all.”
—Joseph I. C. Clarke (1846–1925)
“At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise ... that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)