l62 THE PLANT WORLD. 



THE PASSING OF THE PRAIRIE FLORA.* 



By Walter Albion Squires, 

 Koaskia. Idaho. 



Native plants are doubtless disappearing more rapidly in our 

 prairie states than in any other section of the country. Aloun- 

 tains. swamps, forests and sphagnum bogs are often the last 

 strongholds of the wild flowers. Here they linger long, little 

 patches of the wilderness beauty untarnished by the hand of man. 

 But for our prairie wild flowers there are few such places of 

 refuge. Driven by the plow from the sod of their native mead- 

 ows, and from hillside and hollow by grazing herds, they linger 

 for a time in fence corners and by the dusty roadside, struggling 

 for their lost footholds, choked and dwarfed beneath the domi- 

 nant hordes of introduced weeds. 



A few of our native plants, such as the milkweeds and the 

 compass plant, tend to become weeds and invade the cultivated 

 fields, but all of our rarer and more beautiful species are C|uietlv 

 withdrawing from their native habitat. The sensitive rose, the 

 fringed rein-orchis and the lady's tresses are to be found only 

 where the native sod has been undisturbed. The little white and 

 purple wind-flowers, first of the prairie blossoms to greet the 

 spring, have gladdened the heart of many a settler's child. They 

 were once so abundant in northern Kansas that whole hillsides 

 were colored with them, but I have seen scarcely a dozen blos- 

 soms in the last ten }ears. 



Along the brooks and on moist shaded hillsides the starry 

 campion, yellow lady's slipper, wild HI}- and adiantum fern may 

 still be found but when such places are turned into pasture lands 

 they almost invariabl}' disappear within a few years. 



We cannot decry the enterprise which has in the last half cen- 

 tury transformed the ])rairies from a grassy wilderness to a land 

 where the hum of industry never ceases, a land that has become 

 the granary of the world, a broad and bounteous land of a million 

 happy homes. Hut is it necessary that these beautiful products 



* Awarded the second prize of $io. in the competition of 1905, Stokes 

 fund of the New York Botanical Garden. 



