NEW OR NOTEWORTHY PLANTS FROM THE EASTERN 



UNITED STATES. 



By Edward S. Steele. 



All of the species here offered as new, with a single exception, are 

 based entirely upon my own collections made upon vacation trips 

 or in one case upon a partly official one. They are all supported by 

 copious material, which in most cases could have been increased 

 indefinitely. The few notes made on previously known plants are 

 based on personal field work. 



Several of the species considered are inhabitants of a type of land 

 widely distributed through the mountains of middle Virginia which 

 might well be denominated "shale barrens." This land is made up 

 of exposures of shale in different stages of disintegration, these at the 

 point chiefly investigated consisting of the Romnoy formation of 

 the Lower Devonian. In the valleys these are reduced to a heavy 

 clay, originally covered with good forest and when cleared sus- 

 ceptible of tillage. But the declivities and uplands bear at most 

 a low and open growth of oak and pine or frequently a still lower 

 growth of scrub oak, kalmia, and other shrubs, in either case with 

 admixture of herbaceous plants. The formations are so open that 

 over large areas they can be penetrated on foot with no great dif- 

 ficulty. The barrenness is perhaps largely due to the constant 

 washing away of the finer particles of soil, but in some cases it seems 

 as if it must be chargeable to chemical composition. The plant 

 covering, I should say, is mildly xerophytic, but there is no evidence 

 of extreme drought. On the contrary, the vegetation here maintains 

 itself through the season even on sunbeaten slopes as well as that on 

 other soils similarly situated. The variety of plant life is very con- 

 siderable, and together with many plants well known on other sub- 

 strata, these barrens possess a number of species peculiar to them- 

 selves. So far as observed by me these, with the possible exceptions 

 of one Crataegus and one rose, are all herbaceous or scarcely shrubby 

 plants. The total number may not prove to be very great. ^ Some 

 of them were contained in Mr. Mackenzie's collections at White Sul- 

 phur Springs, Greenbrier County, West Virginia; a few more are 

 described here, not, however, completing the list. 



