INTRODUCTION. 



WORK OF DR. MOHR AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 



Dr. Charles ]\Iohr's great work, the Plant Life of Alabama, 

 a book of over 900 pages, published jointly by the United States 

 National Herbarium and the Geological Survey of Alabama shortly 

 after the author's death in 1901, gives for all the flowering plants 

 known in the state at that time (about 2400 species and varieties) 

 their bibliographic history, general and local distribution, and a 

 few words on their economic properties (if any). Dr. Mohr made 

 no special effort to cover the state thoroughly with his botanical 

 explorations, no funds having been allotted for that particular pur- 

 pose during his lifetime. His field work seems to have been 

 chiefly restricted to the vicinity of ]\Iobile, his home, and Cullman, 

 where he spent several summers with a brother who lived there, 

 and to a few trips made for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad 

 and the United States Department of Agriculture to important 

 timber regions, such as Clay, Washington and Escambia Counties. 

 (In the preface of his book he expresses his indebtedness to the 

 presidents of the three railroads which entered ]\Iobile at that time, 

 presumably indicating that he enjoyed free transportation on 

 them.) 



For information about other parts of the state he depended 

 largely on contemporary local botanists, such as Prof. AL C. Wil- 

 son at Florence, Dr. Eugene A. Smith at Tuscaloosa, Prof. F. S. 

 Earle and several associates at Auburn, and on the records left 

 by some of his predecessors, chiefly Buckley, Peters, and Denny.* 



*ScaUered through Mohr's Plant Life are references to about forty 

 species of vascular plants reported from Suggsville, or from Clarke County 

 without definite locality, by a Dr. Denny ; but he is not mentioned in the 

 introductory chapter dealing with the history of botanical exploration, and 

 his first name appears nowhere in the book. From other sources it has 

 been ascertained that he was Andrew Denny, M.D., who was born in Massa- 

 chusetts in 1812, settled at Suggsville about 1836, and died at Jackson about 

 1870. He is said to have been the leading physician of Clarke County in 

 his daj- (and also somewhat of an inventor) ; and he published a paper on 

 the medicinal plants of Clarke County in 1852 (see bibliography below), 

 which may have been known to Dr. Alohr. 



Dr. Mohr's book contains the names of about seventy botanists who 

 contributed something to the knowledge of the flora of Alabama by collect- 

 ing specimens, etc., but a considerable number of them worked on fungi 

 onlv. 



