Volume 13 Number 5 



The Plant World 



A Magazine of General, Botany 

 MAY, 1910 



THE ARCTIC-ALPINE FLORA OF PIKE'S PEAK. 



By Blanche Soth. 



Pike's Peak, above tiniberline, is divided naturally into two 

 physiographic tA^pes, the glacial amphitheaters and the mead- 

 ows, with their variations, bogs and rockfields. It is chiefly 

 upon the meadows that the abvuidant and variable flora must be 

 studied, as the sheer- walled glacial chasms are almost inac- 

 cessible and the paucity of their vegetation scarcely repays 

 the collector for the labor of their exploration. Nevertheless 

 they are of considerable interest to the student and a few words 

 describing them may not be amiss. 



There are six of these glacial depressions upon the slopes of 

 the peak, the "Crater" and the "Bottomless Pit" being the 

 best known and most accessible. Their perpendicular walls 

 and beetling crags extend downward for more than two thousand 

 feet in places, and it is only upon the floors which slope upward 

 for a little distance from timberline and in the cracks and seams 

 of their walls that plants have been able to establish a foothold. 



Probably the glaciers in their retreat left a little fine ground 

 rock waste upon the narrow, jutting ledges and some has rolled 

 down from above, but by far the greater part of the present soil 

 of the walls is wind blown. The gales which sweep the sides of 

 the great central cone of the peak are so violent and long con- 

 tinued that a considerable accumulation of gravel may be noticed 

 in the sheltered spots after a single storm. I have known the 

 wind to blow with a velocity of from fifty to sixty miles an hour 

 for ten days without stopping, and it often attains a much 



