A BOTANICAL BONANZA IN TUSCALOOSA COUNTY, 



ALABAMA 



By Eoland M. Harper 

 Plate 28 



Tuscaloosa, on the Warrior River, is one of the typical fall-line 

 cities of the South. Above the city the river and all its tributaries, 

 with a few exceptions, flow their whole length through the Warrior 

 coal field, characterized by essentially horizontal strata of sandstone 

 and shale, which make many picturesque bluffs and cliffs along the 

 river, some of them over 150 feet high, interrupted every half mile 

 or so by wooded ravines, containing small streams which may dry up 

 in summer, and at longer intervals by creek valleys. A few tributaries 

 take their rise in limestone vallej^s about 100 miles northeastward, 

 but it is not likely that this fact has any perceptible bearing on the 

 richness of the cliff flora to be discussed presently. Below Tuscaloosa 

 the river cuts through Cretaceous and Eocene strata, with no cliffs of 

 hard rock, and conditions are unfavorable for most of the plants 

 herein mentioned.^ 



Above Tuscaloosa the river runs in a general southwesterly direct- 

 ion, so that the left bank is usually shaded, the bluffs on that side 

 facing in various directions between north and west. On this left side 

 a few miles above the city there is a remarkable assemblage of rare 

 and otherwise interesting plants, on exposed cliffs and shaded bluffs 

 and in nearbj" ravines. For some unknown reason, the greatest con- 

 centration of rarities seems to be about eight miles above the city, 

 their numbers diminishing up and down stream from that point. They 

 gradually disappear also away from the river, as one ascends any of 

 the tributary creeks. The writer has had few o])portunities to explore 

 the right bank, wliich is relatively inacessible, but as most of the bluffs 

 on that side are exposed to the sun in the middle of the day, the shade- 

 loving plants listed below can hardly be expected to thrive there. 



At Squaw Shoals, about thirty miles above Tuscaloosa, there were 

 many interesting aquatic plants in the rocky bed of the river until 

 they were drowned out by the completion of a 63-foot dam in 1915-, 

 but apparently no cliff plants of special interest, except Ileuchera 



* For an afcount of tho river-bank vegetation for a distance of about 250 miles below 

 Tuscaloosa see Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 37:107-126. 1910. 



^ See Torrrya 14:149-155. 1914; Natural History 19:199-201. 1919. 



[1531 



