230 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



general, it can be said that the sphagnums grow best in regions 

 where the climate is moist the year round, and where the summers 

 are not too hot. They develop most luxuriantly near the seacoast, 

 particularly along coasts where fogs are frequent. They are better 

 developed northward than southward. 



In North America, tiphagnum papillosum, ranges throughout 

 much of Canada, extending .southward to New Jersey and Wisconsin 

 in the East and to Washington (probably to Oregon) in the West. 

 S. palustre, S. magellanwwm and S. imbrwatum range somewhat 

 farther south, but, so far as material of good surgical quality is con- 

 cerned, their geographic distribution may be taken as practically co- 

 extensive with that of S. papillosum. The finest development of 

 surgical sphagnum in North America, without question, is in the 

 Pacific Northwest, in the humid strip along the coast from Oregon 

 to Alaska. Hotson 1 even goes so far as to estimate that fully 90 

 per cent of the sphagnum in the United States, suitable for surgical 

 dressings, is located in the Pacific Northwest. The quality of the 

 material in this region is far superior to that of Eastern moss, and 

 it is from here that most of the sphagnum used by the American 

 Red Cross has been obtained. In the East, sphagnum of surgical 

 quality is extensively developed along the coast from eastern Maine 

 northward; most of the moss used by the Canadian Red Cross has 

 come from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Samples of good 

 surgical moss have been seen from southern Michigan and Minne- 

 sota, but, on the whole, material from the interior does not compare 

 at all favorably with material from along the seacoast. 



LOCAL DISTRIBUTION OF SURGICAL SPHAGNUM. 



Taken as a class, the sphagnums are moisture-loving plants; they 

 are hydrophytes. In humid, northern regions, such as coastal British 

 Columbia and Nova Scotia, they are very widely distributed, oc- 

 curring not only in swamps but on uplands as well. But farther 

 south, in regions where the climate is drier and the summers hotter, 

 they are mostly confined to swamps. The sphagnums grow most 

 luxuriantly and most abundantly in bogs (pi. 2), and this unique 

 type of swamp therefore is worthy of special comment. 



Bogs are perhaps most widely known on account of the deposits 

 of peat by which they are commonly underlain, and because of the 

 potential fuel value of these deposits the bogs of this country have 

 been the subject of Government investigations for several years past. 

 Bogs are characteristically developed in wet areas where the soil is 

 poorly drained. Throughout much of the eastern United 'States 

 most of the areas which to-day are occupied by bogs formerly were 



1 Ilotson, J. W. Sphagnum from bog to bandage. Puget Sound Biol. Sta. Bull. 2 : 

 211-247. /. l-i8. 1919. 



