The Ohio VSictturalist, 



PUBLISHED BY 



The Biological Club of the Ohio State Uni'versity, 



Volume XIII. FEBRUARY, 1913. No. 4. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



SCHAFFNER— The Characteristic Plants of a Typical Prairie 65 



SCHAFFNEE— The Classitication of Plants, VIII 70 



Fullmer — Additions Made to the Cedar Point Flora During the Summer of 1912 78 



Humphrey— The Ohio Dogbanes 79 



THE CHARACTERISTIC PLANTS OF A TYPICAL PRAIRIE.* 



John H. Schaffner. 



The characteristic plants of a typical prairie give to it an 

 appearance immediately recognizable whether it is climatic or 

 edaphic. If one had carefully prepared lists of the important 

 plants of prairies in various part of the great Mississippi basin, it 

 would be comparatively easy to select the plants of general 

 distribution from those confined to special areas. 



The prairie described below, not from an ecological but simply 

 from a floristic standpoint, is situated in the center of the North 

 American prairie province about one hundred miles east of the 

 center of the transition zone to the plains region, in Clay County, 

 Kansas. This region has never been glaciated and the surface 

 rocks belong to the characteristic Dakota Sandstone. 



The eastern limit of the transition zone is about forty miles to 

 the west and may in this region be placed at the eastern limit of 

 the range of the prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) and the 

 agricultural ant (Pogonomyrmex occidentalis), both of which are 

 characteristic and abundant animals of the plains. 



In the prairie under consideration there is, of course, some 

 admixture of plains plants, but it is, nevertheless, a typical climatic 

 prairie. The grasses which give color to the region are of the 

 yellow-green type in summer and of a characteristic brown tint 

 when dry, in winter. The color of the prevailing plains grasses 

 is a grayish green, turning to grayish white in winter. These 

 colors contrast sharply with the dark green of the pastures and 

 meadows of Poas now largely developed in the eastern states. 



* Contribution from the Botanical Laboratory, Ohio State University. 

 No. 72. 



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