AREAS Ces 
ANTONOW travelled in these parts from April 18" to June 
27 in 1889, so that, as he states, he has not seen the flower- 
ing season of early spring, nor the late bloom of perennial 
plants. 
ANTONOW has six formations: 
The flora of the Clay(or loess) Desert-plains. 
The flora of the Riverside Thickets. 
The Loess-steppe. 
The Sand-desert. 
The Promontory or Stone-steppe. 
The Mountain or Rock-flora. 
a 
1. The formation of the Clay-Deserts is the most 
prevalent and has the greatest extension of all. The soil has 
a level surface and is formed by loess which is soft and 
greasy in its crude form, and hard as stone when dry. When 
very dry it cracks into 4—5-angled polygons and the surface 
peels off. This soil may occur as the subsoil for other for- 
mations. 
The flora is poor and monotonous, this formation being 
the domain of the Chenopodiaceae. Saxaul (Haloxylon Am- 
modendron) is the most important of these, it is here a low, 
twisted bush, no higher than an Arshin (about 0,7 metre); 
Salsola, Suaeda and Halimocnemis are also mentioned. The 
plants stand far apart from each other.---Where the moisture- 
conditions are more favourable, the plants are more abundant 
and stronger, for instance near water-holes or saline places 
or on the more retentive sands of the dunes. 
The saline places (“Takyr’’ and ‘Ssor’’) are mentioned 
as a sub-formation, but no details are given by which they 
can be differentiated. 
2. The Riverside Thickets. Along the rivers on the nar- 
row strips of land which are continually moist, Tamarix, Poplars 
(Populus euphratica, pruinosa), Willows, Lycium turcomanicum, 
Phragmites, etc. grow, often accompanied by the creepers Cynan- 
chum acutum and Apocynum sibiricum (= A. venetum). They 
form a thick and often impenetrable living fence along the 
banks of the river, — a luxuriant vegetation, the poplars 
