Included here are the Volcano and Bonin islands situated in the eastern Pacific approximately 840 km southeast of Japan. The Bonin Islands known to the Japanese as the Ogasawara Islands formed some 48 million years ago but the Volcano Islands have a much younger geology.

Volcano-Bonin Coastal Beaches

The beaches here are mainly colonized by widespread maritime species with Ipomoea pes-caprae usually the dominant fore dune species. Further inland the grass Cynodon dactylon and the coastal shrubs Scaevola sericea and Vitex rotundifolia dominate the dunes. The few endemic dune species here include the deciduous tree Erythrina boninensis (Fabaceae) and the dune grass Ischaemum ischaemoides (Poaceae).

References

Hosokawa, T. 1934. Phytogeographical relationship between the Bonin and the Marianne islands laying stress upon the distribution of families, genera and species of their vernacular plants. Journal Soc.Tropical Agriculture, 6: 201-278.

Ito, M, Soejima, A. & Ono, M. 1998. Genetic diversity of the endemic plants of the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands.  In: Evolution and Speciation of Island Plants. Eds. T. S. Stuessy &  M. Ono. Cambridge University Press.

Kawakubo, N. 1998. Evolution of cryptic dioecy in Callicarpa (Verbenaceae) on the Bonin Islands. In: Evolution and Speciation of Island Plants. Eds. T. S. Stuessy &  M. Ono. Cambridge University Press.

Kobayashi, S. 1978. A list of vascular plants occuring in the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands. Ogasawara Research, 1: 1-33.

Mueller-Dombois, D. & Fosberg, F. R. 1998. Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands. Springer.

Nakai, T. 1930. The flora of the Bonin Islands. Bulletin of the Biogeographical Society of Japan, 1: 249-278.

Wilson. E. H. 1919. The Bonin Islands and their ligneous vegetation. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, 1: 97-115.

Ono. M. 1998. Conervation of the endemic vascular plant species of the Bonin Islands. In: Evolution and Speciation of Island Plants. Eds. T. S. Stuessy &  M. Ono. Cambridge University Press.

Tuyama, T. 1972. The status of the Bonin Islands flora in the Pacific. In: Floristics and Paleofloristics of Asia and eastern North America. Ed. A. Graham. Elsevier Publishing Company.