The American Midland Naturalist 
PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY BY THE UNIVERSITY 
OF NOTRE DAME, NOTRE DAME, INDIANA. 
VOL. II. OCTOBER, 1912. NO. 11) 12" 
NOTES ON OUR LOCAL PLANTS. 
BY J. A. NIEUWLAND. 
The purpose of these notes is principally to serve as a record 
of the vascular plants that grow spontaneously or without cul- 
tivation in the extreme parts of Northwestern Indiana and South- 
western Michigan. With the exception of Lake and Laporte 
counties in the former, very few reports have been made in this 
region of our indigenous and introduced plants, and so in perhaps 
most instances these records are made for the first time. Though 
one may have a fairly correct idea of the plants that are to be 
expected to grow here, as given in our larger floras of the whole 
country or major parts thereof, so many changes have taken 
place in our local flora within the last decade or two, and are 
even now taking place that we can never be sure which plants 
have become extinct, or have always been locally absent, by 
reference to such works as Gray’s or Britton’s Manuals. In other 
cases plants even positively excluded from our area have been 
found, and some hardly to be expected are as a matter of fact 
quite abundant. In any case the only reliable list of plants is 
that prepared as the result of long and extensive trips through- 
out a more or less limited area. Even then unless the botanizing 
is done year after year regularly in the same places, certain plants 
that seem to appear and disappear periodically are likely to be 
overlooked, as I have had ample occasion to experience. This 
list, if so it may be called, is the result of more or less irregular 
investigation begun about 1896. In a number of instances records 
of plants present in the University herbarium antedate that 
year. I refer to a collection of plants made by Dr. Francis Powers 
who was instructor in botany at the University, and now is pro- 
* October 12, 1912. Pages 267 to 306. 
