1907] Fernald,— Soil Preferences of Alpine Plants 157 
clearly defined floras which are quite absent from certain alpine and 
subalpine areas, but as positively the distinctive plants of certain others. 
In the accompanying table is shown the known distribution south 
of the St. Lawrence and east of the Great Lake region and western 
New York of 258 alpine and subalpine Pteridophyta and Spermato- 
phyta. This list includes a large proportion of the New England spe- 
cies, but owing to the lack of sufficiently accurate knowledge of the 
distribution of certain alpine plants (especially in eastern Canada) they 
are for the present omitted. Many other species belonging to such per- 
plexing genera as Calamagrostis, Poa, Salix, Epilobium, Campanula, 
Solidago, Aster, etc., must await more detailed study before they can 
be satisfactorily identified. 
It should be borne in mind that, in the preparation of these tables 
of distribution, only the alpine and subalpine habitats have been 
included, i. e., the localities in which the plants occur upon soils in 
place, either upon summit-ledges and upper slopes or on exposed 
cliffs and talus. In a few cases plants may be present in the bogs or 
swamps of a given region, but unknown in the rock-habitats. Such 
species are Rubus Chamaemorus and Menyanthes trifoliata, for in- 
stance, abundant in certain bogs along the lower St. Lawrence, but 
apparently unknown from the adjacent sea-cliffs and consequently 
not included from them in the table. 
In tabulating the distribution of plants of regions which are not 
known to the writer from personal observation, it has not always been 
possible to secure full data, and many plants which are probably 
present in these localities are necessarily left unchecked. Some of 
the members of the Pinaceae, for example, are undoubtedly upon the 
cliffs of Smuggler’s Notch, but the published lists of plants of that 
region have naturally laid more emphasis upon the localized species 
than upon those which are common throughout the Green Mountains, 
and the presence of many of the latter may be only assumed. 
Of the 258 plants whose alpine and subalpine distribution is here 
tabulated, many species, it will be noticed, are confined very definitely 
to certain alpine areas, and are quite unknown from certain others. 
These areas which are characterized by distinctive floras fall into three 
major groups, and a fourth or minor group (of a single area) supporting 
a flora which embraces to a striking degree a mixture of plants which 
are otherwise confined very exclusively to one or the other of two of 
the major groups of areas. 
