Studies on the vegetation of New York State—II. The vegetation 
of a glacial plunge basin and its relation to temperature * 
Loren C. PETRY 
(WITH THREE TEXT FIGURES) 
A striking feature of the topography of the region immediately 
about Syracuse, New York, is the occurrence of numerous plunge 
basins produced by waterfalls during the later stages of the glacial 
period. The recently established Clarke State Reservation near 
Jamesville contains several of these basins; Green Lake in the 
Reservation occupies the bottom of a large typical one. Some of 
these are known to botanists acquainted with this region as the 
habitat of certain rare ferns, especially Botrychium Lunaria (L.) 
Sw. (B. onondagense Underwood) and Scolopendrium vulgare Sm. 
Maxon} and others have noted that these stations for Scolopen- 
drium are always quite cool in summer. Some of these plunge 
basins show such remarkably low summer temperatures and dis-’ 
play a vegetation so distinctly northern in character that a pre- 
liminary study of one of them was made during the summers of 
1916 and 1917. 
The basin studied lies near White Lake, six miles southeast of 
Syracuse. It is a natural amphitheater, elliptical in shape, with 
sloping sides; at the top or rim it measures about six hundred feet 
in length and four hundred fifty feet in width, and has a maximum 
depth of about ninety-five feet. Along part of the rim there are 
cliffs five to fifteen feet in height, and the slope begins at their 
foot; elsewhere the slope begins at the rim and descends at an 
angle of approximately thirty degrees until the opposite slope is 
met. The longer axis of the basin lies on an east-west line, and 
* The first of this series is a general discussion of the outstanding features of 
the vegetation of New York state as a whole; the citation to this is 
Bray, W. he development of ~ vegetation of New York State. N. Y. 
State colt igure 4 Syracuse, N. Y. Tech. Pub. 3, 1915 
TM R te. e occurrence a the Hart’s Tongue in America. Fern- 
wort aan: aan: Dec. 1900. ‘ 
203 
