Some unsolved problems of the prairies 



Henry Allan Gleason 



Of the territory now known as Illinois, probably two thirds was 

 originally occupied by the various plant associations constituting 

 the type of vegetation known as prairie.* Poorly developed in 

 southern Illinois, and extending but a short distance east into 

 Indiana or north Into Wisconsin, they swept to the west across 

 Iowa, and in Nebraska united with the main portion of the prairie 

 province, which extends northward from Texas on the south into the 

 British possessions. This eastern extension has been appropriately 

 named by Pound and Clements the eastern arm of the province, 

 and its position is shown with considerable accuracy in their paper f 

 on ''The vegetation regions of the prairie province." The Illinois 

 prairies alone are referred to in this paper. 



Unfortunately for the ecologist, the prairies of Illinois were 

 converted into cornfields long before the development of ecology 

 and phytogeography in America, thus forever prohibiting the 

 satisfactory investigation of some questions of the most absorbing 

 interest and also of considerable importance in aiding a clear 



* Following the stimulating and valuable example of Harper (Ann. N. Y. Acad. 

 Sci. 17 : 25. 1906) concerning the meaning of the terms ** swamp" and ''branch," 

 the use and restriction of the term * * prairie " may be discussed. According to the Cen- 

 tury Dictionary, the word is derived through the French from the 'LsitXn pra/arium or 

 meadow-land, and was first applied by the early French explorers to the broad expanses 

 of grassland of Illinois, Iowa, and neighboring states. The English language, devel- 

 oped in a forested country, had no regular word for grassland except meadow, the 

 meaning of which was restricted by local conditions to cultivated land or to the small 

 strips of grassland along ponds or streams. When the word prairie was adopted from 

 the French into the English, it was still limited to the grassland of the region mentioned 

 above ; it was and is a local term, and should be kept so. Other similar grass-covered 

 lands in different parts of the hemisphere have received analogous names which have 

 become more or less established in the language. Such are pampas in southern South 

 America, llanos in northern South America, and savannas in the southeastern United 

 States. The term prairie should be applied to none of these, nor to any other areas of 

 grassland except those of the limited territory of the Middle West, covered by the 



prairie province. 



f Bot. Gaz. 25 : 381-394. //. 21. 1898. 



265 



t 



\ 



\ 



\ 



