FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 



THE VEGETATION OF THE HACKENSACK marsh: A TYPICAL AMERICAN FEN 



daily the surface of the salt marsh is partly or wholly flooded with salt or 

 brackish water.* 



The outer margin of the salt marsh, where it touches the open lagoon, or 

 the tidal thoroughfare, is fringed with a broader, or a narrower, strip of the 

 taU salt grass, Spartina glabra var. pilosa. Back of this strip, whose width 

 depends on the slope and the height to which the tide rises, we find the rush 

 salt grass, Spartina patens, which grows at a shghtly higher tidal level. Then 

 come the extensive areas of the black grass, Juncus Gerardi, upon which, in 

 part, the economic value of the marsh depends. Sometimes there are exten- 

 sive areas covered with lesser salt grass, Distichlis spicata. The samphires, 

 Salicomia ambigua, S. europcea, grow in pure associations, sometimes mingHng 

 with the lesser salt grass, Distichlis spicata. The sea lavender, Limonium 

 carolinianum, is also found with the samphires, as also Suada maritima and 

 A triplex patula. Finally fresh- water conditions begin to prevail and typical 

 fen vegetation becomes dominant the marsh surface over. 



Fen Formation. — ^The acquaintance of the writer with the vegetation of 

 the Hackensack fenland is based on numerous trips across it by railroad 

 between Newark and Jersey City, Hoboken and Rutherford, by several trunk 

 lines, viz., the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio, Delaware, Lackawanna and 

 Western, and the Erie at all seasons of the year. A detailed study of the 

 marsh was made in company with Vincent G. Burns, who continued its 

 study by a notable collection of plants during several growing seasons. The 

 three most prominent associations of the fen formation are characterized by 

 the dominance of one of three plants, Phragmites communis, Typha latifolia 

 (inland), T. angustifolia (influenced by brackish water), and Zizania palustris. 



Phragmites communis covers extensive areas and is impressive at all sea- 

 sons of the year (Figs. 5, 6). In the spring its fresh, light greens are notice- 

 able; in autumn and early winter its purplish plumes of spikelets bending 

 gracefully with the wind are striking. The movement of the leaves by a turn- 

 ing of the sheaths through an angle of 180 degrees brings them all on to the 

 leeward side of the stem, in the direction in which the wind blows. Where 

 sand has been washed into the marsh the reed forms long running rhizomes, 

 which, growing up out of the muck, stretch across the sand as leafy stolons, 

 a measured distance, in one case, of 5.8 meters. Green, leafy, erect shoots 



* Harshberger, J. W.: The Vegetation of the Salt Marshes and of the Salt and Fresh Water 

 Ponds of the Northern Coast of New Jersey. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Phila., 1909: 373-400. 



