Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 12. February, 1910. No. 134. 
NOTES ON THE PLANTS OF WINELAND THE GOOD. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
THe writer was recently asked for photographs, taken in eastern 
Canada, of the Wild Grape (Vitis Labrusca) and of the Wild Rice 
(Zizania) to be used as evidence that the early Norsemen had made a 
settlement in Nova Scotia; but he was forced to reply, that, so far as 
botanists are definitely informed, neither of these plants is known to 
be indigenous in Nova Scotia. From this simple incident it became 
apparent that much of the evidence that the Norsemen had landed, 
about the year 1000, upon the coast of Nova Scotia or of New England, 
is found in the statement that they discovered “ Wild Rice" or “ In- 
dian Corn" and “Grapes.” And, since a consideration of the plants 
seen upon our coast by Champlain, Rosier, and even later explorers, 
had already more than once lured the writer from the restricted fields 
of his special studies, he has been interested to look into the problem 
of the “ Wild Rice," “ Grapes,” and other plants which were described 
by the Norsemen as abounding in Wineland the Good. 
In the course of this study it has been necessary to refer to the old 
herbals and other early botanical writings, as well as to accounts of 
travels in northern lands, in order to gain an accurate conception of 
just what plants were familiar to the Norsemen of the 11th century, 
who, it should be borne in mind, were Norse who had settled in Ice- 
land and then in Greenland, and whose chief commerce and contacts 
were with the home country, Norway. Without attempting in this 
preliminary notice to discuss many of the details of the sagas which 
touch upon the flora or any which bear specially upon the fauna, 
ethnology, and geography of the three regions of eastern America — 
Helluland, Markland and Vínland — defined in the sagas, it will be 
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