Indigenous plants and animals are few in Raster Island. At the time of European arrival, the toromiro tree was the only wild tree and the Carolina wolfberry the only wild shrub, the vegetation being 3 __1__ herbaceous. The toromiro tree was overexploited by the island wood carvers, and the last local specimen died in the 1950s __2__ the species was saved from extinction. The Norwegian Archaeological Expedition collected seeds and planted them in the Gothenburg Botanical Garden, and saplings from the garden were reintroduced to Easter Island in 1988. Today anly __3__ wild flowering plants, 14 ferns, and 14 mosses are reported. Grass and small ferns dominate the barren landscape, 33 the boggy crater lakes are thickly covered by two imported American species, the fotora reed and Polygonum acuminatum. A number of cultivated species of plants were also introduced partly from America and partly from Polynesia arrival of Europeans; of these the __4__ species was the sweet potato, which was cultivated in extensive plantations and formed the staple diet. Bottle gourds, sugarcane, bananas, taro, yams, and two trees (le, the Asiatic paper mulberryand the American Triumfetta semitriloba) were of aboriginal importation, as also probably were the husk-tomato, a small variety of pineapple, and the coconut