Location  Distance from the Coast  The Harbour  Surface and Elevation   The Coast   The Vegetation  The Fauna  The Climate

The flora of Capri sinks its own roots in grounds composed by red land mixed to rubble of calcareous rock, by tufas, by marls and sandstones with very changeable thicknesses.In fact Capri is covered by a vegetation which is typical of the tirrenic area: low bush and arboreus successional series reproduce the vegetal families of the near Sorrento peninsula.The evergreen bush is certainly the main element: Taranto myrtle, archaelogical survival of the roman gardens, juniper, lentiscus , arboreus heath, rockrose, candelilla shrub, rosmary, verdants in summer, full of colors, of flowers and of fruits in autumn and in winter. In the low zones, ilex joins in thickets or it presents itself solitary, and with it the arbutus, that in autumn gives its yellow and red fruits, the “cerase di mare” that is sea cherries, and the laurel, the carob-tree, the alaterno, or colonies of pine-trees while in the steep cliffs you can find the Chamaerops humilis, the dwarf palm which has been imported from Africa. About 900 sorts have been recognized and classified; in 1697 the botanist Paolo Boccone wrote that “this isle produces curious and rare plants”, and, actually, among the glories and the rarities of the vegetal history of the isle we remember a new sort of Pellitory of the wall, discovered in the 16^th century by Carlo Lacaita that is the Kochia Saxicola, rare and precious plant, unfortunately bound to a rapid death because of the construction of the road to Anacapri, that required the demolition of the rock hill side where it had its vegetal nest.