[Reprinted from ToRREYA, Vol. 15, No. 2, Feb., I915.] 



REVIEWS 



Qrigg^s Botanical Survey of the " Sugrar Grove Reg:ion," Ohio * 



This paper is a good description of an area which is seldom 

 mentioned in phytogeographical Hterature, though of exceptional 

 interest and located in one of our most thickly settled states. 

 An ii-page introduction treats of the geology, topography, soils 

 and climate, and there are 37 pages on the vegetation ("ecology"), 

 6 on economic aspects, and 36 on the flora. The illustrations are 

 excellent half-tones of scenery, vegetation, or single species of 

 plants, most of them apparently never published before; but they 

 are not dated, so that the reader can only guess at what season 

 they were taken from the appearance of the foliage or flowers. 



The area has no very definite boundaries, but is located in 

 Fairfield and Hocking counties, a little southeast of the center of 

 Ohio, in the unglaciated Carboniferous plateau region that ex- 

 tends from Pennsylvania to Alabama. (Some of the illustrations 

 could be matched pretty closely in the coal region of Alabama.) 

 The topography is very broken, though hardly mountainous. 

 (Many readers will doubtless be surprised, as the reviewer was, to 

 learn that there is such rugged topography in Ohio, for much of 

 the surface of that state is very flat.) The soils are mostly derived 

 from sandstone, and therefore deficient in basic materials. The 

 nature of the soil and topography has retarded agricultural 

 development, and thus allowed this area to remain one of the 

 best "botanizing grounds" in the state. 



The average growing season is 155 days, the average annual 



snowfall 25 inches, and the rainfall (from 35 to 40 inches a year) 



is pretty evenly distributed through the seasons, but with a slight 



p , excess in the summer months. In this last particular this locality 



^ resembles many other places with somewhat sandy soils,! and 



^-""^ differs from most places in the Ohio valley. 



* A botanical survey of the Sugar Grove region. By Robert F. Griggs. Ohio 

 ^ Biol. Surv. Bull. 3, or Ohio State Univ. Bull. vol. XVIII (18), no. 25. or Contr. 

 ^^ Bot. Lab. O. S. U. no. 84. 98 pp.. frontispiece, 29 numbered text-figures, and 

 full-page map. "April" 1914 [or rather August, according to a letter from the 

 author]. (The pages are numbered from about 247 to 340. but an examination 

 of Bulletins i and 2 of the same series leaves one in some doubt as to the title of the 

 volume to which the pagination belongs.) 



t See Geol. Surv. Ala. Monog. 8: 24 (footnote). 1913- 



