Minnesota Plant Life. 



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robust, enterprising plants of modern structure, and the pick of 

 the whole world for growing ability — for nowhere is there so 

 great a proportion of what are called weeds and introduced 

 plants as beside a road. There one finds the knot-grasses, rag- 

 weeds, thistles, cockscomb-grasses and other imported species, 

 many of them belonging to types which by sheer vegetable 

 enterprise and ability have found their way with man around 

 the whole northern hemisphere, and some of them are common 

 even to Australia and Africa as well. As might be expected 



Fig. 4.— Spruces forming a zone around a peat-bog. Farther back are tamaracks and pines. 

 The shrub in the foreground is the bog-willow, while the flowers are those of an orchid, — 

 Pogonia. Near Grand Rapids. After photograph by Mr. Warren Pendergast. 



from their distribution along paths or other works made by 

 man, they have been assisted in their wanderings by human 

 agencies rather than by the ministrations of the winds, the 

 water-fowl or the beasts of the field. Such plants appear also 

 in door-yards, in neglected meadows, in pastures, along railway 

 lines and in short wherever man has gone. 



Another kind of zonal distribution, not influenced by human 

 agencies, may be seen around the lakes of the state, especially 

 where beaches have been formed. Here special beach-rows of 



