Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Yol. 11. July, 1909. No. 127. 
NOTES ON THE FLORA OF LOWER CAPE COD. 
F. S. COLLINS. 
Durine the years 1906, 1907 and 1908 I was in the town of Eastham, 
Massachusetts for longer or shorter periods from April to September, 
and while flowering plants were not the principal object of my observa- 
tions, I made the attempt to record and collect specimens of all the 
species that I noticed. ‘The resulting list, while not containing many 
notable rarities, shows curious limitations and other peculiarities, 
and though the full list is not worth printing, some notes may be of 
interest to readers of RHODORA. 
In the trip from Boston to Cape Cod, a gradually increasing sandi- 
ness of the soil is noticeable, from Middleboro on; this increase is 
nearly uniform all the way; at Provincetown, at the extreme end, it 
is not so striking to the traveler, as the latter comes to a compact town, 
the houses with little lawns and gardens; but all the soil for these 
lawns and gardens was brought from more fortunate places, and over 
the ridge that lies back of the town 1s an expanse of sand as desolate 
as апу desert in Asia. At Truro, the next town up, the desolate 
character 15 most manifest to the ordinary traveler, the sand cliffs 
and dunes being unrelieved by any town, only by scattered houses here 
and there. Eastham is about twenty miles from the tip of the Cape, 
and while the scenery 1s not so impressive as that in ‘Truro, the condi- 
tions must be practically the same as to vegetation, and its flora may 
be considered as fairly representative of lower Cape Cod.' The town 
is six miles long, two to three miles wide; the eastern side is all com- 
posed of larger or smaller sand dunes, a somewhat higher bluff facing 
1 By lower Cape Cod is here meant the part beyond the elbow at Harwich; upper on 
the map, but lower as being farther from the mainland, 
