I 2 



Minnesota Plant Life. 



plants \\i\\ he found, consisting" among others of certain sand- 

 loving grasses, cockleburrs, pinks and fumitories, and clearly 

 distinct from the plants farther back upon the shore. Xor will 

 these plants develop so vigorously under any other conditions. 

 Again in the swamp region of the north, A\here a peat-bog is 

 slowly tilling with moss and encroaching upon the forest, beau- 

 tiful illustrations of this zonal arrangement can be observed 

 with the tamarack and spruce trees becoming gradually smaller 

 and smaller toward the center of the bog. In meadows, too. 









Fig. 5. — Zones of aquatic vegetation. In the center pond-lilies; at the edge smart wtcd; far- 

 ther back cat-tails, liliie flags, sweet flags, and sedges; still farther back .soft turf with 

 grass, moss, sedge and milkweed. After photograph by Williams. 



formed by the dr\ing-u]:» of lakes, are sometimes found en- 

 croachments of the meadow plants ii])()n such knolls as were 

 originally islands surrounded b\ water. The meadow, as it 

 were, washes up upon tlie knoll and upon the banks of the old 

 lake, so that niinglcd with ijic dogwoods, willows and olhcr 

 shrubs of the knoll or bank one will obscrxc the grasses aiul 

 sedges of the meadow. 



Zonal distribution is a characteristic arrangement not onl\- of 

 Land, but also ot water plants, and as one pushes his canoe from 

 the shore of a .Minnesot.i lake he will doubtless find that he 



