488 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 



near New York which is here called the local flora. To all those who 

 have wondered how much an actual plant census of any region would 

 derange the Raunkiaer scheme, these figures will come as a surprise. 

 It has been supposed by some that wherever there was a serious dis- 

 parity between the growth-form percentages of a region and the normal 

 spectrum, the fact that species, not individuals, were being considered 

 was obscuring the truth. ^ 



The fact that there is such a remarkable agreement between the 

 percentages based on species and those based on frequency, and that 

 both these sets of figures disagree radically from the normal spectrum, 

 tends to increase the doubt as to the validity of the spectrum as laid 

 down by Raunkiaer. In an earlier paper on the growth-forms of 

 New York and vicinity, it was pointed out that "for no region in the 

 world has there been published such a large percentage of these plants 

 with bulbs, rhizomes, corms, and other subterranean methods of 

 winter protection." Considering that 20.23 percent of geophytes in 

 the local flora area should have occasioned this remark and that for 

 the 400 commonest Long Island species, the figure is 21 percent, the 

 case for the normal spectrum which calls for only 3 percent of these 

 geophytes seems decidedly weak. 



When it is remembered that in the normal spectrum our ordinary 

 deep and shallow-rooted herbs call for only 30 percent, the aquatics 

 I percent, and chamaephytes 9 percent, we have a total of only 40 

 percent for all herbaceous plants on the most favorable assumption. 

 Actually many of the chamaephytes are low woody plants, so that the 

 normal spectrum allows only about 35 percent for herbaceous plants 

 of all kinds, excluding annuals, or 48 percent including them. The 

 percentage for the same groups in the local flora area is about 79 per- 

 cent, for all Long Island 83 percent, and for the 400 commonest species 

 it is 78 percent. There can be here no question of the wrong assign- 

 ment into the Raunkiaer growth from categories, for by lumping the 

 chamaephytes (about half of which may be woody), hemicryptophytes, 

 geophytes, aquatics, and annuals, we separate at once the woody from 

 the herbaceous species. Does this difference of 30 percent in the 

 herbaceous element of the vegetation of Long Island from that of the 

 normal spectrum really mean that the region is so far off normal or 

 that the normal spectrum itself is in need of further study? 



It has been shown that there is a rather definite relation between 

 the percentages of herbaceous and woody elements in temperate and 

 tropical floras, but unfortunately the figures as published deal only 

 with dicotyledons.* For our purposes, however, they show the per- 



' Am. Journ. Bot. 2: 30. 1915. 



* Sinnott, E. W., and Bailey, I. W. The origin and dispersal of herbaceous 

 angiosperms. Ann. Bot. 28: 566-567. 1914. 



