ZONES OF VEGETATION AROUND A POND 



Marsh Ragwort forming the first belt thirty feet wide 



Such a pond as this is a good place to study plant societies, 

 both congenial and antagonistic. Some plants live together in 

 peace, sharing space, food, and water, and in various ways being 

 mutually helpful; others wage war on their neighbors, the success 

 of one bringing disaster to competitors. The character of the 

 season has a large share in determining with whom victory shall 

 rest. 



The year 1919, or perhaps the Fall of 1918, seemed to favor 

 the Marsh Ragwort which is usually a Winter annual. In many 

 places it was more in evidence than usual, but nowhere have I 

 seen a more complete triumph over competing vegetation than 

 it won around this particular pond. In the zone suited to it, 

 every foot of space was occupied to the exclusion of all else. 

 Behind the ragworts was a fairly solid belt of the great bulrush. 

 Back of this were coarse grasses and sedges, among which, how- 

 ever, the northern green orchis, the skullcap, mint, knotweed, 

 and other plants were thriving. On still higher ground the willows 

 dominated, as did the poplars on the low ridge in the background. 



By mid-August the water was gone and the mud beginning 

 to dry and crack. The portion of the pond bottom that shows 

 as a mud bar in the picture was densely carpeted with young 

 ragworts six inches high. In the deeper parts, where the water 

 remained longest, and among the dead stems of the parent plants, 

 seedlings were breaking ground in countless numbers, hence the 

 ragworts bid fair to repeat their triumph next year. We may wish 

 them good luck, for they stay in their own place, do not march 

 %p on to higher land to choke out the farmer's crops, and in 

 June transform their portion of the landscape into a veritable 

 "Field of the Cloth of Gold." 



40 



