[ II ] 



THE FI,ORA OF COUNTY ARMAGH. 



BY R. I^LOYD PRAEGER, B.E., M.K.I. A. 



District io of " Cybele Hibernica," including as it does the 

 counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh, Monaglian, and 

 Cavan, may be termed the north-central botanical district of 

 Ireland. The north-eastern maritime district of Down, 

 Antrim, and Derry (No. 12) lies between it and the North 

 Channel, and the north-western maritime district of Donegal 

 (No. 11) cuts it off from the Atlantic; district 10, the largest 

 of the twelve Irish botanical regions, having a surface of 

 over 3,700 square miles, is entirely an inland area, touching 

 estuarine waters only for a few miles at Newry in the south- 

 eastern extremity, and near vStrabane in the north-west. This 

 large tract presents a considerable diversity of character, both 

 geological and physical ; extensive bogs and lakes are some- 

 what numerous, and yield a fairly representative flora ; several 

 mountain ridges rise to over 2,000 feet, but they are remarkably 

 poor in alpine and montane species ; the poverty of the 

 maritime and mountain floras will probably keep the total 

 flora of district 10 below that of districts 11 or 12, even when it 

 has been thoroughly worked out. 



The tenth botanical district has not claimed by any means 

 a great amount of attention from Irish botanists, and a glance 

 at *' Cybele Hibernica " shows a very large number of blanks 

 in the " district 10 " column of the table of distribution, many 

 of even the most widely-spread species being unrecorded. 

 Since the publication of "Cybele," however, Messrs. S. A. 

 Stewart,^ R. M. Barrington,^ H. C. Hart,^ and others, have 

 wiped out many of these blanks, and have added a number of 

 interesting plants to the flora of the district. Their obser\'a- 

 tions having been made chiefly in the western portions of the 

 region under consideration, it appeared to me that further 

 examination of the eastern part might be desirable, not the 

 less so since a number of old records of rare plants existed, 

 the confirmation of which would alone be of some importance 



^ Report on the Botany of the mountainous portion of Fermanagh and 

 C2i\s.n.— Froc. R. LA., iS^2. r, r a qc 



2 Report on the Flora on the shores of Lough Erne.— /"r^^. R. A A., ibf)3. 



3 Notes on the Plants of some of the mountam ranges of Ireland.— 

 Proc. i?. /. ^., 1883. Rare Plants from Co. Tyrone, Jour, of Bot., ibby. 



