SOME SAND-BARREN PLANTS. 

 Bv Willard N. Clute. 



THE geological forces that shaped Long Island seem to have been 

 quite undecided whether or not to make more than one island 

 of it. At a point toward the eastern end, the Atlantic sends 

 Shinnecock Bay northward, all but meeting that broad sweep 

 of water from the Sound, Great Peconic Bay, and is only prevented 

 from cutting the island in two by a narrow strip of sand dunes called 

 the Shinnecock Hills. To those who are only familiar with the luxu- 

 riant vegetation of an inland flora this region is likely to be one of 

 peculiar interest; not because of its varied forms, but rather from the 

 very paucity of them. Any one interested in the distribution of plants 

 and the means employed by them to exist under adverse conditions, 

 could find few better opportunities for study than are here presented. 



I doubt if there is any other place within a hundred miles of New 

 York City where so much of the desolate is crowded into the land- 

 scape. On every side, as far as the eye can reach, the yellowish-white 

 sand stretches away in a sterile, uncultivated, sun-burned, wind- 

 swept, treeless waste. The surface is a succession of swells and hol- 

 lows — like that of its neighbor the sea — and the larger eminences could 

 suggest hills only to the most vivid imagination. 



The first thing to attract the notice of a visitor from a more fer- 

 tile region is the fact that the vegetation is so scanty that the soil 

 actually shows through it ; often there are considerable areas in which 

 absolutely nothing grows. Much, however, that at a distance ap- 

 pears bare and gray, is found upon closer inspection to be covered 

 with lichens — the reindeer-moss ( Cladonia ) principally. While in 

 large patches Cladonia is sole tenant of the soil, other plants have 

 their special domain also. It is remarkable how the various plants 

 tend to grow in masses of one kind, as if Nature was here trying her 

 hand at gardening and had assembled each species into a bed of its 

 own. 



Inland, the sweet-fern delights in dry and sterile hillsides, but 

 here the soil is not always to its liking. It grows only in the more 

 fertile portions, and then seldom attains its usual size. Its cousin, 

 the bay-berry or wax-myrtle, is found throughout in scattered clumps, 

 the cool dark-green of its foliage seeming to promise shade and rest; 

 but this is only an enchantment fostered by distance, for the tallest 

 branches do not reach as high as a man's head. In these sandy places 

 one looks in vain for the sun-loving bracken- — probably it gave up the 

 strviggle long ago. 



