is divided into six zones; one of them was the sea zone. This is
subdivided into marine flora, coastal and remote islands flora
and halophytic or coastal flora. According to the author, this last
subdivision includes the mangrove and psamophilic flora, which
is typical of the sands of restingas and dunes(46).
Although consecrated, the category restinga vegetation
proves to be improper and leads to a misunderstanding because
this type of vegetation does not grow only on restinga but also
on steep coast. Brazilian oceanic coast is not all constituted
by restinga geological-geomorphological formation. Therefore,
we propose the nomenclature psamophilic and coastal rupico-
lous vegetation. Psamophilic because it prefers sandy soils and
rupicolous because it grows on rocky substratum. Coastal is to
distinguish it from the psamophilic and rupicolous vegetation
from inland areas.
Sampaio also details the psamophilic flora in its hetero-
clite dimension, as long as restingas present topographic and
pedological variations. Thus, he distinguishes, as integrating
the psamophilic flora, the woody xerophilous flora of uplands,
the hygrophilous flora of the humid lowlands and the hydrophil-
ic flora of the wetlands and lagoons(46).
There is a gap regarding the coastal biota of the northern
Fluminense region. Two hypotheses can be raised to explain it.
Either the abundance of firewood and hardwood extracted from
the seasonal forests has led the European settlers to scorn the
restinga plain trees until recently, or the item wood, both for do-
mestic consumption and for export, in general, also including
the woody biomass obtained from coastal forests. It is known
that the entourage of the seven captains already made tree cut-
ting on a small scale (46), probably with a little more intensity
than that practiced by the natives. On their second voyage in
1633/1634, two axes, three machetes and five hoes were left for
the cattle handler Valerio da Cursunga and for the shipwrecked
found among the Indians by the noblemen. However, it appears
that the most targeted forests were those located in the up lands
of the fluvial plain, denser and larger(10).
In his first book, Alberto Ribeiro Lamego devotes great
disdain to the coastal psamophilic native vegetation, using im-
properly the lessons of the botanist from Campos dos Goytaca-
zes Alberto José de Sampaio. In his judgment,
In the soil of lezírias (soil that the river
drags and lay on its banks) and restin-
gas, the halophilic, sclerophyllous and
tropophilous vegetation overflow the
exuberance of a teratological flora. Hos-tile tucuns (spiny palm), useless pump-
woods, contorted shimbillo trees, crip-
pled cashew trees rise from the rough
rug of scitaminea and grasses, brome-
liads and cacti in shrinking, with flower-
ing and floating traps of water lilies and
water hyacinth. Only the bignoniacea
"tabebuia" provides us with the firewood,
shoe trees and the clogs(54)!Apart from tabebuia, that is ipê, a tree species of great
ecological value, the other plants that grow on sandy coastal
soil do not have any economic value and do not deserve consid-
eration in the eyes of Lamego. This utilitarian view also emerg-
es from another book by the geologist, whose opinion was that
the salvation of the restinga consisted in ceasing to be restinga.
For this purpose, he advocated the protection of the flora, even
recognizing it as inferior, since the rarefaction of tree and shrub
species would transform the still hopeful region into a desert.
Hence his condemnation of deforestation, since it would further
aggravate the already hostile conditions for economic activity.
However, it is imperative to fertilize the sandy soils so that they
become propitious to agriculture and livestock. In short, restin-
ga would only thrive, according to Lamego, insofar as its eco-
physiognomy approached the fluvial plain(55,56).Perhaps the contempt for this kind of vegetation throws
light on the scarcity of references. The reports left by the Euro-
pean naturalists suggest that they already had a preconceived
idea of forest, whose main features would be the diversity of
species, the predominance of large trees, forest density, internal
complexity, humidity, heat, silence, a certain danger coming from
wild animals and wild Indians. A very different conception of the
temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere considerably re-
duced in size in Europe by a secular exploitation. It is satisfying
to perceive the rapture of Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, Her-
mann Burmeister, Spix and Martius, Tschudi and Saint-Hilaire
in contact with the seasonal and tropical rain forests. From this
view, coastal psamophilic forests assume a minor role. And the
curious thing is that this image contaminated the Brazilian nat-
uralists. As a rule, for agronomists and forest engineers, valu-
able native vegetation must necessarily have large trees.More recently, Dorothy Sue Dunn de Araujo and Raimun-
do Henriques recognized that "Restingas are still little known
regarding their floristic composition and the plant formations
therein contained, especially those to the north of Rio de Janei-
ro State, as shown by an analysis of the existing bibliography
for restingas until 1982."(57) Only recently scholars realized the
ecological importance of native coastal psamophilic plant for-