FLORA OF A WAYNE COUNTY SALT MARSH. 



BY FOREST B. H. BROWN. 



East of the Mulkey Salt Works, Ecorse, Sec. 28, occurs a salt marsh 

 of several acres, which the writer visited in 1913. The marsh partly 

 surrounds a well, drilled over twenty years ago, and is evidently the 

 same as the saline region at Oakwood, visited by Farwell and other 

 Detroit botanists in 1915 and reported upon in Rhodora for December, 

 1916 (18:243, 244). The following plants were observed in the marsh: 



Salicornia europaea L. 



Atriplex patula L. var. hastata (L.) Gray, 



Spartina patens (Ait.) Muhl. 



Agropyron repens (L.) Beauv. 



Polygonum aviculare L. 



Agrostis alba L. 



Hordeum juhaUim L. 



Danthojiia spicata (L.) Beauv. 



Melilotus alba Desv. 



The first three are most abundant and grow under conditions of ex- 

 treme salinity. The others occur where soil is still saline but not so 

 wet. Farwell mentions Salicornia europaea, and also such characteristic 

 salt marsh plants as Pluchea campJiorata and Aster subulatus, but it is 

 somewhat remarkable that he makes no. allusion to the equally character- 

 istic Spartina patens, one of the most abundant plants in the area and 

 heretofore unreported from Michigan so far as the writer knows. 



No exact data could be obtained to account for the origin of these 

 plants, but, if salt springs were present before the drilling of the well 

 over twenty years ago, they may have preserved this association of salt 

 plants which was subsequently extended by overflow from the well. 



OsBORN Botanical Laboratory, Yale University. 



19th Mich. Acad. Sci. Rept., 1917. 



