GiLMORE] INFLUENCE OF POPULATION ON FLORA 59 



here by immigrants from those States; other species, for instance 

 Salsola pestlfer (Kussian thistle), have been introduced directly from 

 Europe. 



Verbascum thapsus (mullein), Arctium rmnus (burdock), Lean- 

 todon taraxacum (dandelion), and many other weeds now very com- 

 mon, are of recent introduction by this means, besides many plants 

 purposely introduced by the white settlers, such as Nepeta cataria 

 (catnip), Roripa armoracia (horseradish), and other herbaceous 

 plants, and fruit and timber trees, vines, and shrubs. 



Although these sources of plant immigration into Nebraska are 

 recognized, the human factor in plant distribution prior to the 

 European advent is not so obvious and may not have suggested itself 

 to most of my readers. But the people of tlie resident tribes traveled 

 extensively and received visitors from distant tribes. Their wants 

 required for various purposes a great number of species of plants 

 from mountain and plain and valley, from prairie and from wood- 

 land, from regions as remote from each other as the Rio (iraude and 

 the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence. 



Their cultivated plants were all probably of Mexican origin, com- 

 prised in the Cucurbitaceae (squashes, pumpkins, gourds, and water- 

 melons), Phaseolus vulcjaris (garden bean) in 15 or more varieties, 

 Zca viays (corn) in five general types aggregating from 15 to 20 

 varieties, and their tobacco, N'wotiana. quadrivaJHs. 



But besides these known plant immigrants already carried into Ne- 

 braska by human agency before the adventof Europeans, certain facts 

 lead me to believe that some plants not under cultivation, at least in 

 the ordinary sense, owe their presence here to human transporta- 

 tion, either designed or undesigned. Parts of certain plants, and in 

 most cases the fruits or fruiting parts, were desired and used for their 

 fragrance, as the seeds of AquUegia. canadensis, the fruiting tops of 

 2'haUctrum purpurascens, the entire plant of Galmm tnfarum, the 

 fruits of Zauthodi/lwm amcricanum, and leaves ami tops of Monarda 

 fisfiilosa. Any of these ea.sily might be, and probably were, unde- 

 signedly distributed by the movements of persons carrying them. 

 Desirable fruits were likely carried from camp to camp and their 

 seeds dropped in a viable condition often in places favorable to their 

 growth. Malus ioemls is found in Iowa and on the west side of the 

 Missouri Eiver in the southeast part of Nebraska, but nowhere higher 

 up the Missouri on the west side except on a certain creek flowing 

 into the Niobrara from the south near the line between Knox County 

 and Holt County. The Omaha and Ponca call tliis creek Apple 

 Creek on that account. The original seed, so far from their kind, 

 probably reached this place in camp kitchen refuse. 



