BOTANICAL NOTES. 



By John Muir. 

 INTRODUCTORY. 



The plants named in the following notes were collected at many localities on the coasts of 

 Alaska and Siberia, and on Saint Lawrence, Wrangel, and Herald Islands, between about latitude 

 54° and 71°, longitude 161° and 178°, in the course of short excursions, some of them less than an 

 hour in length. 



Inasmuch as the flora of the arctic and subarctic regions is nearly the same everywhere, tlie 

 discovery of many species new to science was not to be expected. The collection, however, will 

 no doubt be valuable for comparison with the plants of other regions. 



In general the physiognomy of the vegetation of the polar regions resembles that of the alpine 

 valleys of the temperate zones; so much so that the botanist on the coast of Artie Siberia or 

 America might readily fancy himself on the Sierra Nevada at a height of 10,000 to 12,000 feet 

 above the sea. 



There is no line of perpetual snow on any portion of the arctic regions known to explorers. 

 The snow disappears every summer not oidy from tlie low sandy shores and boggy tundras but 

 also from the tops of the mountains and all the upper slopes and valleys with the exception of 

 small patches of drifts and avalanche-heaps hardly noticeable in general views. But though 

 nowhere excessively deep or permanent, the snow-mantle is universal during wiuter, and the 

 plants are solidly frozen and buried for nearly three-fourths of the year. In this condition they 

 enjoy a sleep and rest about as profound as death, from which they awake in the mouths of June and 

 July in vigorous health, and speedily reach a far higher development of leaf and flower and fruit 

 than is generally supposed. On the drier banks and hills about Kotzebue Sound, Cape Thompson, 

 and Cape Lisbourne many species show but little climatic repression, and during the long summer 

 days grow tall enough to wave in the wind, and unfold flowers in as rich profusion and as highly 

 colored as may be found in regions lying a thousand miles farther south. 



OUNALASKA. 



To the botanist approaching ajiy portion of the Aleutian chain of islands from the southward 

 during the winter or spring months, the view is severely desolate and forbidding. The snow comes 

 down to the water's edge in solid white, interrupted only by dark outstanding bluffs with faces too 

 steep for snow to lie on, and by the backs of rounded rocks and long rugged reefs beaten and 

 overswept by heavy breakers rolling in from the Pacific, while throughout neai'ly every mouth 

 of the year the higher mountains are wrapped in gloomy dripping storm-clouds. 



Nevertheless vegetation here is remarkably close and luxuriant, and crowded with showy 

 bloom, covering almost every foot of the ground up to a height of about a thousand feet above 

 the sea — the harsh trachytic rocks, and even the cindery bases of the craters, as well as the 

 moraines and rough soil beds outspread on the low portions of the short narrow valleys. 



On the 20th of May we found the showy Geum glaciale already in flower, also an arctostaphylos 

 and draba, on a slope facing the south, near the harbor of Ounalaska. The willows, too, were tlien 

 begiuning to put forth their catkins, while a multitude of green points were springing up in 

 sheltered spots wherever the snow had vanished. At a height of 400 and 500 feet, however, 

 winter was still unbroken, with scarce a memory of the rich bloom of summer. 



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