INTRODUCTION- 



i. The range covered by this book is that laid down by the 

 committee on local flora of the Torrey Botanical Club in their 

 Preliminary Catalogue of 1888. It comprises all of the state of 

 Connecticut; Long Island; in New York the counties bordering 

 the Hudson River up to and including Columbia and Greene, also 

 Sullivan and Delaware counties; all of New Jersey; and Pike, 

 Wayne, Monroe, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northampton, Lehigh, 

 Carbon, Bucks, Berks, Schuylkill, Montgomery, Philadelphia, 

 Delaware and Chester counties in Pennsylvania. (See map, pi. 1.) 

 When making a botanical survey, an area such as this, determined 

 wholly by political boundary lines has many disadvantages over 

 purely natural vegetation-regions, such as the pine-barrens, for 

 instance. But it has seemed advisable to adopt the range as 

 outlined by the committee in spite of obvious drawbacks. 



2. The method of working out the problem of the distribution 

 of our local plants has been, after determining what species 

 actually occurred in the range, to list all the localities for which 

 specimens were extant. Published records, of whatever sort, 

 have been closely studied, and the results of such studies have been 

 added to the records substantiated by specimens, wherever, in 

 the judgment of the writer, these records were deemed reliable. 

 Such published records have, however, been very sparingly used 

 in the grasses, sedges, Crataegus, Rubus, Rosa and Viola. Recent 

 studies in these groups make it unsafe to base conclusions upon 

 the old records of species, many of which are not today tenable 

 or are regarded in a new or restricted sense. The writer has made 

 no effort to include records published since January 1, 1914, although 

 some of these recent records are noted. All of the native and 

 introduced species contained in the manuals have been included, 

 besides many more, mentioned in notes, that are little more than 

 waifs. All the genera and species are provided with keys, which 

 have been omitted for waifs and other plants mentioned only in 



* Much of this introductory matter was completed with the aid of a grant from the 

 Esther Herrman Research Fund, of the New York Academy of Sciences. 



