‘PREFACE 
Tuis flora furnishes a key to the commoner spring-flower- 
ing families of Phanerogams and descriptions of the charac- 
teristics of these families, together with such genera and 
Species under each as seem most available for school study in 
the central and northeastern states. The descriptions have 
been in part compiled by the author from various sources, 
and in part written with the plants themselves in hand. The 
characterizations of many families and of some genera are 
taken with slight simplifications from Hooker’s Student’s 
Flora of the British Islands; a few are from Warming’s 
Systematic Botany. The remainder are mostly adapted from 
the floras of Gray and Wood, from Sargent’s Silva of North 
America, and from Britton and Brown’s illustrated Flora of 
the Northern States and Canada. 
The sequence of the families (and sometimes the genera 
under their respective families) is based on Engler’s Syllabus 
der Pflanzenfamilien, which has also been followed as regards 
nomenclature of families. In other regards the sixth edition 
of Gray’s Manual, and Bailey’s revision of Gray’s Field, Forest, 
and Garden Botany have been followed as authorities. Valu- 
able information concerning the precise time of flowering of 
_ many species has been derived from Darlington’s Flora Cestrica 
and Ward’s Guide to the Flora of Washington and Vicinity. 
By arrangement with Professor S. M. Tracy a considerable 
portion of the key and a large number of the following 
descriptions have been copied (a little simplified) from his 
Flora of the Southeastern States ; these are designated by an 
asterisk at the end of each description. 
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