SOME DYNAMIC STUDIES OF LONG ISLAND 



VEGETATION' 



ROLAND M. HARPER 



College Point, New York 



Most studies of vegetation hitherto published consist largely 

 of lists of species, with or without indications of relative abun- 

 dance, morphological or other descriptive notes, illustrations, 

 analyses of environmental factors, and speculations about 

 succession; all of which tells what the vegetation is or attempts 

 to explain why it is. It is also important to take a pragmatic 

 view of vegetation and investigate what it is. doing, just as a 

 man should be judged not altogether by his appearance, an- 

 cestry, wealth or position, but also by the good he does. In 

 other words, we should try to ascertain how much growth a 

 given type of vegetation makes in a year, and how much food 

 and watet it takes from the soil; matters which ought to be 

 pretty closely correlated with environmental factors. 



To determine the annual increment of woody plants is not 

 an easy matter, but many foresters have done it for restricted 

 areas of forest (and usually for only one species at a time) 

 by means of careful measurements and calculations. The 

 measurement of the growth of herbaceous vegetation is much 

 simpler, but strange to say very little has been done along that 

 line, except for cultivated crops, or with an economic object 

 in view. There is practically nothing on the subject in the 

 latest botanical text-books and vegetation monographs, but it 

 seems that a little work of the kind was done in Europe about 

 thirty-five years ago.- The earliest American investigation of 



1 Read at a meeting of the Ecological Society of America, December 27, 1916 ; 

 and subsequently elaborated a little. 



2 See C. Schroter, in Actes du Illme Congres International de Botanique 

 (Bruxelles 1910), 2: 117-118. 1912. 



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