INTRODUCTION 11 



method of transportation has its disadvantages, for it is difficult 

 to write legibly while traveling on a rough road, and good roads 

 do not usually pass close to much natural vegetation. Long trips 

 on foot have been made in most of the counties, enabling the verifi- 

 cation of many tentative car-window identifications, and the find- 

 ing of many species not visible at all from the highways. 



A few hundred days of field work, scattered over a period of 

 more than 33 years, have made the notes on distribution in the 

 present report much more detailed than any hitherto attempted in 

 Alabama or any neighboring state. The following catalogue is 

 based on about 30,000 locality records for trees and half as many 

 for shrubs. Of course no one ever lives long enough to explore 

 every square mile of a state as large as ours, and a hundred years 

 from now there may still be important areas in Alabama botanic- 

 ally unexplored. But our knowledge of the distribution of all the 

 conmioner trees is now reasonably complete, and future changes 

 will consist mostly of discovering new localities for the rarer 

 species (or the destruction of some localities now on record), and 

 splitting species now regarded as one into two or more. 



Some idea of the relative completeness with which different 

 parts of the state have been explored by the writer may be afforded 

 by the statement that his personal records show 93 native species 

 of trees and 83 of shrubs and woody vines from Tuscaloosa 

 County, 13-i woody plants from Choctaw, 131 from Bibb, 130 from 

 Chilton, 119 from Washington, 116 from Sumter, 113 from Clarke, 

 113 from Covington, Jefferson and Talladega, 111 from Baldwin, 

 110 from Pike, 108 from Geneva, 106 from Clay, 105 from But- 

 ler, Elmore and Monroe, 103 from Autauga, etc.* 



*These counts were made a few years ago, and subsequent field work, 

 particularly in 1927, when special attention was given to parts of the state 

 more easily reached from Montgomery than from Tuscaloosa, would in- 

 crease the figures for some of these counties, especially Autauga, Clarke 

 and Monroe. Some of the counties from which I have the fewest records 

 were covered pretty well by Dr. Mohr or some of the other collectors cited 

 in his book. Every county is mentioned in the catalogue, however. 



