166 Rhodora [JUNE 
THE VASCULAR PLANTS OF MOUNT KATAHDIN. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
(Plate 32.) 
AMONG the numerous scattered accounts of Katahdin there are 
few detailed lists of the plants. In fact, many who have written of 
the mountain seem to have noticed only a fewcommon species, while 
others have contented themselves with vague or unfounded general- 
izations. Besides those who have written on Katahdin there are, of 
course, a number of people who have there picked up plants of more 
or less interest. But so far as is now known to the writer the results 
of only two serious botanical trips are unrecorded. These will be 
discussed in the following summary which attempts to show our pres- 
ent knowledge of the more important botanical explorations of Mt. 
Katahdin. 
In 1837, Prof. J. W. Bailey published in the American Journal of 
Science (xxxii. 20-34) an account of his geological studies on the 
mountain. Several plants were enumerated, mostly from the base or 
the lower slopes. 
Thoreau, whose vivid account of the mountain can be appreciated 
only by those who like him have pulled themselves “ up by the side of 
perpendicular falls of twenty or thirty feet.. .. ascending by huge 
steps, as it were, a giant’s stairway, down which a river flowed,” 
noted, in 1846, many of the common species, but the unpropitious 
weather prevented his exploring extensively. 
In August, 1847, George Thurber, the distinguished agrostologist, 
Aaron Young, a student from Bangor, and John Emerson of Glenburn, 
Maine, ascended the mountain and made extensive collections. No 
report of their results seems to have been published, though a large 
number of specimens, both from Thurber and from Young, are in 
the Gray Herbarium. ‘Their route seems to have been the old one by 
the Wassataquoik valley, thence to Katahdin Lake and up the East 
Spur. Though they brought back the first representative collections 
of Katahdin plants they apparently got none of the rarer species, 
and the data on their labels are unfortunately incomplete. 
« Parson” Keep, the veteran guide and independent pastor of a 
faithful flock, whose unique but intimate knowledge of Katahdin and 
the flora of northern Maine was transmitted to no successor, knew 
