584 Harper: Coastal plain plants in Georgia 



But, no matter how many or how few species we include in 

 this class, present knowledge is sufficient to indicate with certainty 

 that outside of the coastal plain their number is greatest in western 

 Georgia and eastern Alabama, gradually decreasing northward, 

 until in the highlands of Virginia and Kentucky there are very few 

 such plants worth mentioning. Just why this is so is a problem 

 to be solved in the future by the aid of geology ; the object of the 

 present paper is not to inquire into that, but to present a few addi- 

 tional examples recently discovered in a part of the region of 

 greatest promise above indicated, and to indulge in a few specu- 

 lations regarding their history. 



One of the earliest papers dealing primarily with the excep- 

 tional occurrence of coastal plain plants farther inland is that by 



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southern Appalachian region, in Science for November 30, 1900. 

 In Mohr's Plant Life of Alabama, published eight months later, 



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are many details of the local distribution in that state of such 

 species as are here discussed. Additional information about some 

 of them can be gathered from Harbison's Sketch of the Sand 

 Mountain Flora* and Earle's Flora of the Metamorphic Region 

 of Alabama,t both published in the spring of 1902. In 1 906 the 

 writer published two papers I giving several more instances of the 

 same kind from northern and eastern Alabama. 



Comparatively little field work has been done in those parts of 

 the metamorphic or Piedmont region of Georgia where coastal 

 plain plants are most likely to be found, and almost nothing has 



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been printed about the vegetation there. In the latter part of the 

 summer of 1908 I had occasion to spend about a month in west- 



Mohr, Contr. U, S. Nat. Herb. 6: 60-62, 73-74, 75 (near bottom), 97. 190K 

 Much less was known about the details of plant distribution in the South at the begin- 

 ning of this century than now, and some of the earlier discussions of geographical 

 affinities are based on such imperfect data as to be somewhat misleading. *' Austro- 

 riparian" plants especially have been discussed at considerable length without being 

 sufficiently defined. 



*BiItmore Bot. Stud. I : 151-157. 



fBulL 119, Ala. Agric. Exp. Sta, In this, unfortunately few details of distri- 

 bution are given, and the boundar}' between the metamorphic region and coastal plain 

 is not drawn sharply enough to exclude several species which are strictly confined to 

 the latter. 



JTorreya6: III-117; Bull. Torrey Club 33 : 523-536. 



