A WHITE-CEDAR SWAMP AT MERRICK, LONG 

 ISLAND, AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE^ 



Norman Taylor 



Brooklyn Botanic Garden 

 (with plates 6-1 o) 



The white cedar {Chamaecyparis thyoides) is sufficiently scarce 

 near New York City to make a grove of several hundred acres a 

 spot of peculiar interest. About twenty-five miles from the City, 

 at Merrick, on the south shore of Long Island, there is a cedar 

 swamp more than a mile long and varying in width from a few 

 yards to nearly half a mile. The same swamp has been noted by 

 Miss Mulford (12), Nichols (14), Bicknell (15), and Harper (13). 



The general range of the species as given in the manuals is 

 (doubtfully indigenous in Nova Scotia) from southern Maine 

 south along the coast to western Mississippi. All of the stations 

 for it on Long Island are on the coastal plain except those near 

 Riverhead, where it is found between the Harbor Hill and Ronkon- 

 koma moraines. These stations near Riverhead are mostly 

 scattered trees, there being no grove of any considerable area. 

 Not only is this cedar swamp at Merrick the largest on Long 

 Island, but so far as the general distribution of the species is 

 concerned, it is the extreme northern outpost on the coastal plain 

 of any considerable grove, the other cedar swamps on the island 

 being much smaller. For this reason the occurrence of Chamaecy- 

 paris at Merrick and its behavior is of special interest. Chamaecy- 

 paris thyoides occurs in the area of which New York is the center, 

 either on the coastal plain, or in the glaciated region, not in the 

 intervening territory (7, 11, 19, 22, 24). In the glaciated area 

 it is scattered through southern and eastern Connecticut, northern 

 New Jersey and in Westchester, Putnam, and Orange counties on 

 the mainland of New York, and is nearly always found in glacial 

 pot-holes, or morainal depressions. On the coastal plain it is 



^Brooklyn Botanic Garden Contributions No. 14. 



79 



