PLANTS OF FARGO 55 
The area considered is roughly that of 4 or 5 miles radius about 
the City of Fargo, one-half of it thus being in Minnesota adjacent 
to the City of Moorhead. The general topograpHy may be des- 
cribed very briefly. The bed of glacial Lake Agassiz, which is 
said to be perhaps the most nearly level large area of land in the 
world, is, at this point, about 40 miles in width, extending 15 miles 
to the east and 25 to the west. The soil is a black, fine-grained, 
heavy loam, poorly drained and frequently with slightly, lower 
areas too wet for regular cultivation. 
A belt of timber covers the banks of the Red River of the North. 
Commonly this is but a few rods in width, but frequent bends 
result in somewhat larger areas. White elm, green ash, and box 
elder predominate, with basswood on some of the lower portions 
and burr oak on the higher. An occasional bit of aspen, cut off 
as it were from the Minnesota forest some 50 miles eastward fur- 
nishes various species not elsewhere found. One such area several 
miles in length on the east side of the river about 3 miles north, 
adds a number of plants to this list. 
Excepting for some of the lower portions above mentioned, the 
land is nearly all under cultivation and of the original prairie only 
scattered fragments and the roadsides remain. Frequency in such 
habitat will therefore be understood as applying to such portions 
of prairie as are yet to be found. In the gravel used for ballast on 
the railroad tracks a number of plants common to the higher prairies 
have become established to various degrees. 
In preparing this list the writer has made use of one compiled 
several years ago by Mr. C. H. Waldron to whom credit is due fer 
various contributions. he notes on distribution and abundence 
are based upon personal observations, species upon which such are 
not available remaining on authority of the collector as shown in 
the herbarium of the North Dakota Agricultural College. Early 
in 1920 the writer examined the herbarium carefully for Fergo 
specimens and found that some sixty species were not represented. 
The greater part of these were secured during the season and the 
remainder will be secured -the coming season if possible. 
The nomenclature and arrangement of Bergman’s Flora of North 
Dakota (Sixth Bienn. dept., Agric. Coll. Survey) have been fol- 
lowed although not always in accord with the writer’s ideas or 
latest usage. With regard to common names, some ettempt has 
been made to supply suitable ones where they seemed lacking and 
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