TRANSACTIONS OF WAGNER 

 14 



THE VEGETATION OF THE HACKENSACK marsh: A TYPICAL AMERICAN FEN 



are produced all along this rhizome, which reaches the thickness of a lead- 

 pencil. 



Recently Harper,* in some dynamic studies of Long Island vegetation, 

 has estimated that one acre of Phragmites communis about 10 feet tall, with 

 77 stems per square yard, or 372,680 stems per acre, on September 19th pro- 

 duced 48,400 pounds of fresh material, 24,000 pounds of air-dried material, 

 and 1585 pounds of ash. In dry weight of the marsh plants Phragmites leads 

 by a large margin. 



Elsewhere the cattails, Typka angustifolia and T. latifolia, are supreme, 

 the former growing most commonly where it is influenced by an occasional 

 inundation of salt water, while the latter is more strictly confined to fresh- 

 water conditions. These two plants compete with the reed grass, Phragmites, 

 in the occupation of the marshland. It would be hard to say, without experi- 

 mental data, just what conditions determine the success of one or the other 

 associations of plants. It may be edaphic, or it may be purely historic, reasons 

 which determine the nice adjustment of conditions which permit the growth 

 of the cattails to the exclusion of the reed, and vice versa. Harper {loc. cit.) 

 has shown that an acre of Typha latifolia, with i per cent, of other plants 

 standing 5 feet tall, with 30 stems per square yard, produced 31,460 pounds of 

 fresh material, 12,100 of dried material, and 296 pounds of ash. Typha angus- 

 tifolia, in a fresh marsh at the head of a brackish marsh, growing 9 feet tall 

 with 61 stems per square yard, all sterile, yielded 53,240 pounds of fresh sub- 

 stance, 15,443 pounds of dried material, and 843 pounds of ash. All these 

 estimates are from plants growing in marshes on Long Island, east of New 

 York City, and, therefore, the figures probably stand good for similar sized 

 areas on the Hackensack marsh. 



The wild rice, Zizania palustris, is found most usually in the deeper water 

 along some stream or river controlled by fresh water, where it forms associa- 

 tions of considerable width and size. In early spring, as its shoots appear 

 above the muck surface, they are light green, and as summer advances the 

 plants sometimes grow to be 10 feet tall. In August, when the wild-rice fruits 

 are ripe, the marsh is lively with various birds that feed upon the wild rice. 

 Such are the reed birds (bobolinks) and Sora rail, also large flocks of red-winged 

 blackbirds, while in July, August, and September swallows are by far the 



* The Plant World, 21: 38-46. 



