55 



In Indiana, as in most other northeastern states, there are few 

 distinct endemic species as compared with some of the southeastern 

 states. This is due partly to its small size and dearth of unique 

 habitats, and partly to the encroachments of civilization, which may 

 have already wiped out some very local species, and scattered others 

 outside of their original range. The fact that most of the state was 

 covered by glaciers, perhaps only 50,000 years ago, may be another 

 factor tending to reduce the number of endemics. One can pick out 

 from the catalogue forty or fifty species, varieties, etc., that are at 

 present known only from Indiana, or Indiana and one other state, 

 but the great majority of these are hybrids, or recently described 

 and not very distinct varieties and forms, that might easily turn up 

 elsewhere when botanists study them closely enough. Practically 

 none has a well-defined range that stops short of the borders of the 

 state. 



In a state with 94.7 inhabitants per square mile (1940 census), 

 and the greater part of the area cultivated at one time or another, 

 and all the forests easily accessible to lumbermen, many unques- 

 tionably native plants have adapted themselves to changed condi- 

 tions and persisted in weedy as well as in undisturbed habitats, 

 while some, less adaptable, or originally confined to sites very 

 subject to economic exploitation, have disappeared entirely, and 

 a horde of more or less undesirable immigrants has come in from 

 Europe and elsewhere to take possession of fields and roadsides. 



In Indiana, as in other thickly settled states, practically every 

 species has felt the devastating effects of civilization in some degree, 

 and there are all gradations between delicate plants that are found 

 only in undisturbed habitats, and the weeds of ditches, fields, road- 

 sides, vacant lots, etc. ; so that it is hard to draw the line between 

 natives and exotics. A few of the species now confined to unnatural 

 habitats, such as Phytolacca, Primus angustijolia, Passiflora in- 

 carnata and Solanum Carolinense, may have existed in Indian clear- 

 ings before the white man came, but it is hard to get evidence on 

 that point now. 



Many authors of local floras in the northeastern states, with 

 the veneration for authority characteristic of long-settled regions, 

 have accepted without question the distinction between native and 

 introduced species made in current manuals ; and if a species is 

 regarded — rightly or wrongly — as native anywhere in the eastern 



