BULLETIN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



[Yol.Yll 



Leaving out of view a considerable number of temperate species which 

 here and there become alpestrine or persist in dwarfed forms within some 

 truly alpine regions, the alpine flora of the United States does not 

 comprise a large number of species. It may be useful to present a tab- 

 ulated list of them, i. e., of the phsenogamous portion, under three heads, 

 placing the ampler Kocky Mountain alpine flora in the center and the 

 more restricted Atlantic and Pacific alpine floras one on each side. 



It will be understood that the survey is limited to the United States 

 proper, reaching latitude 47° on the Atlantic and 49° 40' on the Pacifici 

 side, in all of which the proper alpine flora is confined to high altitudes, 

 from about 5,000 to over 14,000 feet above the sea-level. On the At- 

 lantic side it is only a matter of a few isolated summits in New England 

 and Northern New York, the Alleghanian or Apalachian chain and its 

 dependencies not being high enough in New York and Pennsylvania, 

 and being in too low latitude notwithstanding their greater elevation in 

 the Garolinas, to have more than alpestrine vegetation, although a few 

 properly alpine species linger on the summits. On the Pacific side we 

 have to do only with the Sierra Nevada and its northern prolongation j 

 and there, too, we make latitude 47° the northern limit, because north 

 of that parallel, we cannot at present well determine the limit between 

 what belongs to the Eocky Mountains and what to the continuation of 

 the Cascade Mountains. 



The species which are not arctic are distinguished by italic type ; 

 when the genera are peculiar to the region, the generic name is printed 

 in small capitals. To save space in the columns, the names are i^rinted 

 without reference to authorship. 



The left-hand column is so insignificant, that it might have been 

 omitted. We cannot amplify it by adding alpine plants from farther 

 north, such as the stragglers about the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the 

 Labrador flora, for these are found nearly at the sea-level and are ex- 

 tensions of the proper arctic flora. 



