AN ECOLOGICAL STUDY OF BUCKEYE LAKE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The problem of an ecological survey of Buckeye Lake was 

 taken up on account of the many interesting and instructive 

 features which the region offers. It is an artificial lake main- 

 tained under artificial conditions and used for the past eighteen 

 years as a pleasure resort. Because the basin is very shallow, 

 aquatic plants if left undisturbed, would soon gain possession of 

 the entire area and render navigation impossible. To prevent 

 this, the vegetation in the main channels and where landing 

 places were desired, has been frequently and perhaps perma- 

 nently destroyed. 



This lake then offers a field for the study of a natural 

 ecological succession in an uninterrupted development since the 

 beginning of the present lake, eighty years ago, and also de- 

 nuded areas with a more or less successful invasion and sec- 

 ondary succession. It is moreover, the habitat of a Cranberry- 

 Sphagnum bog, which without doubt antedates the lake and the 

 former swamp. 



In the following paper I shall attempt to present a general 

 view of the flora of the entire region, obtained by a detailed 

 suivey of areas typical of the different phases presented in the 

 region and shall try to trace the development of the flora. 



The beginning of a systematic study of ecological phyto- 

 geography is of very recent date, Humboldt (1805) is credited 

 by Warming^^ as being "the first to lay stress upon the signif- 

 icance of plant-physiognomy in relation to the landscape," and 

 consequently the subject is experiencing many developmental 

 stages in the methods of study and in the terminology. In the 

 latter especially there is diversity of opinion among the most 

 •eminent ecologists, not so much as to the relations existing be- 



