OBSERVATIONS ON THE FLORA OF MAMMOTH 

 CAVE, KENTUCKY! 



Richard Ellsworth Call 



DeWitt Clinton High School, New York City 



In presenting these notes it is desired that they be considered 

 only a preHminary account of the plants of the great underground 

 world of Kentucky. 



Packard, Putnam, and Hubbard, and later Eigenmann, who has 

 almost compelled us to believe that the blind fishes really see, 

 have well presented the animal side of the Cavern's life. Your 

 relator has added some twenty additional species, mostly new, 

 described by specialists and to be found in the accompanying 

 bibliography.^ 



Thanks to the painstaking interest of Dr. Roland Thaxter, his 

 careful study of the more difficult cryptogamic material collected 

 by me has added very much to our knowledge of cave forms. 



Mammoth Cave underlies some 2,500 square acres of region and 

 the avenues that have been mapped extend over a distance of more 

 than 160 miles. This great distance is disposed in three vertical 

 series or layers, determined by the drainage levels of former 

 geological times. From the surface to a depth of some 225 feet 

 below it these connecting avenues occur. Its greatest depth 

 is determined by the present level of the Green River on the left 

 bank of which the cave is situated. The depth of the caiion of 

 Green River marks the extreme depth of the cave. 



It is, of course, to be fully understood that the total absence of 

 light precludes the possibility of chemic or actinic rays, and there- 

 fore all plant forms that possess chloroplasts are absent. The 

 flora is entirely saprophytic. 



1 Abstract. 



2 Call, R. Ellsworth. Note on the flora of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Jour. 

 Cincinnati Soc. Nat. Hist. 19: 79-80. Mr 1897. 



Call, R. Ellsworth. Some notes on the flora and fauna of Mammoth Cave. Am. 

 Naturalist 31: 377-392. /;/. lo-ii. My 1897. 



Hovey, Horace C, & Call, Ellsworth R. The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 

 8vo, cloth, Louisville, 1897. John P. Morton & Co. A completely revised and better 

 illustrated edition appeared in 1912. 



Hovey, Horace C, & Call, Richard Ellsworth. Bibliographic chronologique and 

 analytique de Mammoth Cave, Kentucky (Etats-Unis d' Amerique). Spelunca 

 Bulletin et Aiemoires de la Societe de Speleologie 9: 191-237. Jl 1914. 

 6 65 



