A BOTANICAL SURVEY OF THE SUGAR GROVE REGION 



By Robert F. Griggs 



INTRODUCTION 



The Sugar Grove region is a narrow strip of country extending 

 from a few miles north of the town of Sugar Grove in Fairfield County, 

 Ohio, in a southerly direction about twenty miles to the valley of 

 Queer Creek near the southern boundary of Hocking County, thus 

 occupying parts of the Lancaster and Laurelville quadrangles as 

 mapped by the U. S. Geological Survey. It has been denominated 

 the Sugar Grove region in this paper not because the various plant 

 societies which distinguish the area reach their climax at Sugar Grove 

 but because that is the only railroad station lying immediately in the 

 region. The country in the vicinity of this village has long been known 

 among the botanists of Ohio as the richest collecting ground in the 

 state with the exception, perhaps, of the region around Sandusky. 



In its general relations the flora may be described as an outlier 

 of the great Allegheny mountain flora from w^hich it derives a consider- 

 able number of Appalachian plants, like the great Rhododendron, which 

 do not occur elsewhere in Ohio. Besides these plants there are a num- 

 ber of others, like the Lycopodiums, which belong in the Canadian 

 area and come into Ohio from the north, reaching their southern limits, 

 so far as Ohio is concerned, in the present area. In addition to these 

 there is a third element of southern plants such as Aralia spmosa which 

 stretch up from Kentucky and Tennessee and reach their northern- 

 most limits in this region. These elements conspire to make the 

 region interesting and to give a very large proportion of the flora that 

 quality of "rarity" which is so dear to the heart of a collector.* 



While the Sugar Grove area is rather definitely delimited by the 

 physiographic features about to be described, its principal plant asso- 

 ciations are not at all limited to its confines. With slight modification 

 they cover much of the hill country in southeastern Ohio and parts 



*These relations have been discussed in detail by the writer in two papers, as follows: 

 Observations on the Geographical Composition of the Sugar Grove Flora. Bull. Torr. 

 Club. 40: 487-499, 1913. 



On the Behavior of Some Species on the Edges of their Ranges, ibid 41: 25-49. 1914. 



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