PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 241 



game preserve and if the same care could be taken of its flora, that is 

 taken of its birds and trees, it would remain a valuable heritage for all 

 time. It is easily accessible by rail. 



Along the Squaw creek, perhaps a mile and a half from the Iowa State 

 College buildings, is a little bit of ground known to students as "the 

 patch." To reach it formerly we found our way by no well-marked path, 

 but rather by a sense of direction, over the ridges, or along the stream 

 where sometimes trees reached so far into the water that only by cling- 

 ing to the trunk and swinging around it could one continue his way and 

 finally come to this most picturesque portion of the farm, which was at 

 high water an island, literally carpeted with violets. Beyond are the 

 wood anemones bounded by a curve of hawthorn trees. The violets are 

 a little darker than those that grow elsewhere, the stems a little longer 

 and constant picking only increases the number of blooms. When groups 

 of students come in from the north woods laden with these beautiful 

 flowers, we know, regardless of the calendar, that spring is here. As 

 the road builders approach this bit of fairyland, thus making it accessible 

 by carriages, we hear on every hand the mournful query, "Will the violet 

 patch too be exterminated?" 



On a steamer trip to Kenora, the northern part of the Lake of the 

 Woods, a beautiful island is passed sixteen miles out from the city. This 

 is the municipal picnic ground, than which none more beautiful can be 

 found anywhere. There is a sandy beach for bathing, virgin pines, firs, 

 birches, spruces and maples offer shade and in season there is a wealth 

 of native flora that has never been disturbed. As we rounded the point 

 not long ago, we met a couple of launches filled with a merry party on 

 the way to the island for an evening of enjoyment. Several in the boat 

 spoke of the far-sightedness in saving this island for the people. 



Our city and country cemeteries offer opportunities not to be over- 

 looked for establishing native flora. In the small rural cemetery near one 

 of our country churches is a plantation of the orchid, Spirantheas cernua, 

 that is found only in that one locality in a large radius of territory. 



The golf and country club is becoming more and more a recognized 

 factor in the small city's recreational resources. The grounds, owned or 

 leased, usually contain a strip of woodland bordering a running stream. 

 Cannot the custom be established of creating a native plant preserve 

 in a park at least of such territory? 



The movement for conservation of our national resources is one that 

 is gathering force year by year, and it is for us to help it by practical 

 means. 



It may be long before extensive botanical gardens and arboreta are 

 established in Iowa. Meanwhile let us use the means at hand, school 

 grounds, parks, cemeteries, country clubs, bits of forest land here and 

 there, and exert our influence to forward the growing tendency to look 

 upon the great field of nature as a heritage of all the people to be pre- 

 served for the use of all, not only as a source of recreation, but as an 

 historical record of the flora of our beautiful Iowa. Iowa Forestry and 

 Conservation Association, Report 1914-15, pp 80-88. 



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