THE PLANT WOKLD 109 



BOTANIZING IN AND AROUND A LAKE. 



By E. L. Morris. 



MOST people who collect plants either for pleasure or for study, 

 have had opportunities to gather numerous species about bodies 

 of water varying from mere puddles or pools to the Great Lakes. 

 If we may judge from the representation of aquatics in various herbaria 

 or their mention in lists of " plants collected," etc., it is very easy to 

 picture ninety or more per cent, of the people out collecting faithfully 

 skirting any body of water which comes in their path, but never exam- 

 ining or saving the different kinds which can not be reached without 

 getting upon or into the water. But they miss their opportunity, and 

 the acquaintance of some of the most beautiful and delicate plants that 

 grow. It is true that one must get i^artly or wholly wet to gather these 

 out-of-the-way citizens, but on a fine summer day that only increases 

 the enjoyment of the outing, for it is so easy to prepare properly 

 for such thorough search. In all probabilitj'^ there is no boat at hand, 

 as it is at the other end of the lake, or the pond is too small or remote 

 for a boat for other than our momentary need. As likely, also, the bot- 

 tom may be covered with several inches, sometimes feet, of the ooziest 

 possible mud. But these are the water and bottom homes of some 

 plants known in their variation only to the j)rofessional collectors. 

 Many times have I been asked how these plants have been gotten, when 

 people have been looking over a collection. Surely by no other way 

 than to go in and get them. 



Most of the so-called ponds in the older parts of the country were 

 originally formed by the damming of some stream, or at least increased 

 in size and depth by raising the outlet. This appropriation of more 

 territory by the water has often modified the flora of these ponds very 

 markedly, retaining certain influential soil and topographical characters 

 for very many years, which have entirely disappeared, if ever present, 

 in the wholly natural lakes. But that is a (question too far-reaching for 

 our subject, yet one of that very kind of pond was the collecting ground 

 for the following marsh and aquatic species secured during one fore- 

 noon at about the middle of the State line between Massachusetts and 

 Connecticut. Knowing nothing of the flowerless plants below the fern- 

 worts, we made no attempt to collect or record them. Starting beyond 

 the upper end of the lake, along the pools ond stream in a short valley 

 which rises in the very water-shed between the two States, we collected 

 carefully down the valley and lake to its outlet, then up an arm of the 

 lake to a larger stream from another part of the divide, and last in a 

 bog below the lake. In these pools and brook there was scarcely a 

 plant other than Nuttall's pondweed {Potamogeton Nuttallii), whose 



