96 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Tuesday Evening Session. 



The programme for this session was made up of three short lectures by 

 members of the faculty of Michigan university. First came some reports 

 and resolutions, when the regular order was taken up, beginning with 



PROF. V. M. SPALDING ON "MICHIGAN FLORA." 



The indigenous flora of Michigan has always presented many points of 

 interest to those who have given any attention to the natural resources of 

 our state, and there are some reasons why it should be of special interest 

 to professional cultivators of flowers and fruits. 



Since the days of the first explorers and settlers, this flora has beea 

 steadily, and in some localities rapidly, changing. Forest fires have swept 

 over wide areas, and in place of the magnificent representatives of the 

 primeval forest have come up briars and poplars. The farmer has indus- 

 triously, and of course necessarily, cleared his land, exterminating here a 

 moccasin flower and there a fringed gentian or harbinger of spring. Borne 

 on the winds, or scattered in clover seed, or thrown out of car windows, 

 have come in like a flood, Canada thistles and prickly lettuce, daisies, and 

 quack and bur-grass and other noxious weeds. The removal of the shel- 

 tering woodland is followed by the slow death of shade-loving plants, and 

 drainage of low tracts means the extinction of many more. 



All this is inevitable, but as a result our native flora has already under- 

 gone such changes that probably no one living would be able, from exist- 

 ing data, to give an accurate account of the natural vegetation of the state 

 as it was in the days of the aborigines. Nor can those who come after us 

 know what our present flora is, except as it is permanently recorded by us 

 in carefully preserved lists and herbaria. The geological history of the 

 state, so far as it remains, is kept in imperishable form, but its botanical 

 history is subject to vicissitudes that render its complete preservation, even 

 while it is in the making, well-nigh impossible. Those who best under- 

 stand these facts regret very deeply every unnecessary sacrifice of our 

 original flora, and want to keep, just as long as possible, every living thing 

 where H is and as it is. But, apart from such changes, taking our flora as 

 we find it, let us glance at some of its prominent and characteristic 

 features. 



One not familiar with the natural productions of Michigan, and at the 

 same tirne accustomed to notice botanical peculiarities, would, upon enter- 

 ing the state for the first time, notice a number of marked and interesting 

 features. He could hardly fail to be impressed, even now, with the great 

 forest wealth of the state and the natural areas of its distribution, the wide 

 belt of pine land, the heavily timbered hardwood sections, the oak open- 

 ings, the pine barrens, each with their characteristic sorts of woody plants, 

 among which such northern species as the spruce and fir, and the southern, 

 warmth-loving coffee-tree, gum-tree, and pawpaw, have alike found a 

 congenial home. With these a host of lesser trees and shrubs, woody 

 climbers, and, finally, bushes and nndershrubs, making a grand total of 

 over 200 woody species occurring within our limits. He would observe, 

 corresponding with the great variety of soil and climate, a similar profuse- 



