



. i». V 



The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY. 



Vol. III. JANUARY. 1900. No. 1. 



NEW JERSEY PINE BARRENS IN JULY. 



By ('. F. Sauxders. 



ATRIP of ihirty-tivo miles through the heart of the Pine Barrens 

 of New .Tersey in mid-summer, is an undertaking which the 

 average collector, acquainted with the characteristics of that 

 rich I)otanical hunting ground, recfar<ls at first blush with en- 

 thusiasm. On sober second thought, however, owing to the heat, the 

 moscjuitoes and tlies, and the heavy sands at that season, combined 

 with an utter absence of accommodations for man and beast, he is apt 

 to postpone the excursion until some other year. Nevertheless, in July 

 last, \V. N. Clute and the present writer made such a journey through 

 a country removed from the I)eaten track not only of botanists, but of 

 pretty much every other sort of human being, except an occasional 

 berry picker, the route being from Tuckerton, near the coast, to 

 Atsion, an inland village on the line of the New Jersey Southern Rail- 

 road. In the course of this trip, which was accomplished in a wagon 

 and occupied three days, a very comprehensive idea w^as obtained of 

 the flora of this fascinatino- wild g-arden. 



Seven miles northwest of Tuckerton we crossed the stretch of open 

 country locally known as the East or Lower Plains — a g-enuine rolling 

 plain of sand three or four miles in width and twice as long, covered 

 with a miniature forest of tiny pitchpine [Pimu^ ric/ida), scrub oak 

 { Qi/rrons iUcifolia) and Black Jack [Q. nigra). These Tom Thumb 

 trees — they are only two or three feet high — have covered the plains 

 from time immemorial, and tradition has it that no taller orowth was 

 ever known there, except an occasional stray shoot like a sassafras six 

 feet high which we saw. Stunted and prostrate though they be, the 

 little oaks bear acorns, and the little pines produce cones, and are to all 



