PLANTS OF SOUTHERN NEW JERSEY. 339 



This remarkable plant was discovered by Frederick Pursh 

 (1774-1820),* one of the first botanists to publish on the Pine 

 Barren flora, on one of his excursions in the swamps about Quaker 

 Bridge. At the time Dr. Britton's Catalogue was published, sev- 

 enty-five years later, there were but five stations known where it 

 grew, while to-day I have seen specimens from only a dozen, all of 

 which lie between Tom's River on the north and Atsion and 

 Pleasant Mills on the south, mostly east of the New Jersey South- 

 ern Railroad — roughly speaking an area twenty by thirty miles. 

 This has been supposed to be the only spot in the world where the 

 plant occurs, but in the Commons herbarium at the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, there are specimens of both 

 Aba ma and To field ia from near Lewes, Delaware, collected by 

 Mr. Albert Commons, August i and 15, 1895, respectively. 

 Probably some of the older localities are now extinct, as the 

 Abama is one of those plants which are exterminated by cran- 

 berry culture. The damming and flooding of the bogs covers 

 the low wet sandy spots frequented by the plant and it disap- 

 pears — at least I have never been able to find it on the edges of 

 cultivated bogs. On the branches of the Wading River about 

 Chatsworth and Speedwell, where broad, wet sandy bogs abound, 

 I have seen great patches of Abama, the short stiff leaves curv- 

 ing up from the root stalks in thick ranks like short grass, and 

 the yellow spikes standing close together make a golden sheen 

 over the bog that can be seen at quite a distance. Even when in 

 fruit they make quite a show, the seed capsules being rich reddish 

 brown and the stalks and bracts buff like wheat chaff. 



Fl. — ^Mid-June to late July. 



Pine Barrens. — Toms River, Ostrom (NY), Forked River, Pasadena, Jones 

 Mill (S), Pole Branch (S), Speedwell. Chatsworth, Atsion, Quaker Bridge, 

 Batsto (C), opposite Crowleytown, below Batsto, Mullica River (same as 

 last?), Pleasant Mills.f 



*Bot. Gazette VII., 141. 



fThe record at Barnegat quoted by Keller and Brown, from Britton's 

 catalogue, is not in the catalogue, and it was apparently entirely erroneous. 

 The Woodbury record given by Britton on authority of Mrs. W. McGeorge is 

 in all probability based upon a misidentification. As nearly as Dr. Britton 

 can recollect, the record was one of a number sent to the Geological Survey 

 without accompan^^ing specimens and which were included at the request of 

 the Survey authorities. 



