488 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 
near New York which is here called the local flora. To all those who 
have wondered how much an actual plant census of any region would 
derange the Raunkiaer scheme, these figures will come as a surprise. 
It has been supposed by some that wherever there was a serious dis- 
parity between the growth-form percentages of a region and the normal 
spectrum, the fact that species, not individuals, were being considered 
was obscuring the truth.® 
The fact that there is such a remarkable agreement between the 
percentages based on species and those based on frequency, and that 
both these sets of figures disagree radically from the normal spectrum, 
tends to increase the doubt as to the validity of the spectrum as laid 
down by Raunkiaer. In an earlier paper on the growth-forms of 
New York and vicinity, it was pointed out that “‘for no region in the 
world has there been published such a large percentage of these plants 
with bulbs, rhizomes, corms, and other subterranean methods of 
winter protection.’’ Considering that 20.23 percent of geophytes in 
the local flora area should have occasioned this remark and that for 
the 400 commonest Long Island species, the figure is 21 percent, the 
case for the normal spectrum which calls for only 3 percent of these 
geophytes seems decidedly weak. 
When it is remembered that in the normal spectrum our ordinary 
deep and shallow-rooted herbs call for only 30 percent, the aquatics 
I percent, and chamaephytes 9 percent, we have a total of only 40 
percent for all herbaceous plants on the most favorable assumption. 
Actually many of the chamaephytes are low woody plants, so that the 
normal spectrum allows only about 35 percent for herbaceous plants 
of all kinds, excluding annuals, or 48 percent including them. The 
percentage for the same groups in the local flora area is about 79 per- 
cent, for all Long Island 83 percent, and for the 400 commonest species 
it is 78 percent. There can be here no question of the wrong assign- 
ment into the Raunkiaer growth from categories, for by lumping the 
chamaephytes (about half of which may be woody), hemicryptophytes, 
geophytes, aquatics, and annuals, we separate at once the woody from 
the herbaceous species. Does this difference of 30 percent in the 
herbaceous element of the vegetation of Long Island from that of the 
normal spectrum really mean that the region is so far off normal or 
that the normal spectrum itself is in need of further study? 
It has been shown that there is a rather definite relation between 
the percentages of herbaceous and woody elements in temperate and 
tropical floras, but unfortunately the figures as published deal only 
with dicotyledons.t. For our purposes, however, they show the per- 
s'Am: Journ. Bot. 2330: “1915; 
4Sinnott, E. W., and Bailey, I. W. The origin and dispersal of herbaceous 
angiosperms. Ann. Bot. 28: 566-567. I914. 
