PHYTOGEOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE COASTAL 



PLAIN OF ARKANSAS 



ROLAND M. HARPER 



Geological Survey of Alabama, University, Ala. 



Less botanical work seems to have been done in Arkansas 

 than in any other state bordering the Mississippi River, and what 

 Httle has been done has been almost entirely floristic. The best 

 known floristic papers are probably those of Professor F. L. 

 Harvey, mostly published in the Botanical Gazette between 1881 

 and 1885, and the catalogue of plants by Branner and Coville 

 in the fourth volume of the report of the Geological Survey of 

 Arkansas for 1888. In the way of descriptions of vegetation 

 there are a few meager details in Nuttall's narrative of his journey 

 to the ''Arkansa Territory," 1821, D. D. Owen's two reports 

 on the geology of Arkansas, 1858 and 1860, Loughridge's report 

 on cotton production in the fifth volume of the Tenth Census, 

 Sargent's report on forests in the ninth volume of the same series, 

 reports by Branner and his assistants published by the state 

 geological survey about twenty years ago, and the soil surveys 

 of certain counties published by the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture in recent years. More useful to the phytogeographer 

 and plant sociologist are Bulletin 32 of the U. S. Bureau of 

 Forestry, entitled ''A Working Plan for Forest Lands Near Pine 

 Bluff, Arkansas," by F. E. Olmsted, 1902, and part of S. M. 

 Coulter's "Ecological Comparison of Some Typical Swamp 

 Areas," in the fifteenth report of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 

 1904. 



In June, 1911, I spent something over five days in the coastal 

 plain of Arkansas, and although I collected no specimens and 

 made no startling discoveries, I gathered considerable informa- 

 tion about the vegetation which will probably be as new to most 

 persons who read this as it was to me. 



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