Minnesota Plant Life. 459 



sedges, cat-tails, bulrushes and reed-grasses, the aerial or lateral 

 branches arise. The rootstock commonly bears scale leaves. 

 These may be well seen if a cat-tail plant is dug up and washed. 

 Among the perennial rootstock-forming herbs, which are the 

 characteristic plants of reed swamps, a few shrubs are often 

 found growing, such as willows and alders. 



Wet meadows. A second class of swamp vegetation is known 

 as swamp-moor or wet meadow. In such regions there is a 

 high percentage of ground water, but under ordinary conditions 

 the subterranean portions of the plants are not directly covered 

 by standing water. Such meadows exhibit in Minnesota a variety 

 of plants, for the most part sedges, grasses and rushes, but with 

 a strong intermixture of other plants, including such varieties 

 as the shield-ferns, marsh-marigolds, the Parnassias, some gen- 

 tians, buck-beans, orchids, willow-herbs and parsleys. Here, 

 too, swamp-saxifrages and pitcher-plants are often to be found. 

 Mingled with the herbage which is the predominant vegeta- 

 tion of such wet meadows a variety of shrubs may grow, in- 

 cluding dogwoods, willows, dwarf birches, buckthorns, and 

 spirseas or meadowsweets, and, in northern parts of the state, 

 heaths or crowberries. A considerable moss vegetation exists 

 in such wet meadows, including sometimes peat-mosses, but 

 also carpet mosses, hairy-capped mosses and others. Some- 

 times moss meadows occur, forming a transition to peat- 

 bogs and peat-tundras. In arctic regions such wet meadows 

 are inhabited often by lichens to the exclusion of other plants. 

 As is also true of aquatic vegetation these wet meadows are 

 tenanted for the most part by perennial species. 



Peat-bogs. A particular type of swamp vegetation is the 

 peat-bog. It differs from the ordinary wet meadows in the 

 chemical character of its soil. Chalk and potassium are pres- 

 ent in peat-bogs in smaller quantities than in wet meadows, 

 and it has been shown that the nitrogenous content of peat- 

 bogs is less than that of wet meadows. Humus, therefore, 

 forms better in wet meadows than in peat-bogs. On account 

 of the low nitrogenous content of the peat-bog there is a 

 poorer development of bacteria and vegetable remains are, 

 therefore, better preserved if sunken in peat than if embedded 

 in the bacterial soil of a wet meadow. The distinctive plants 



