ALEXANDER AND SVENSON : FIELD TRIP 171 



Our transportation had been very carefully arranged by Dr. Small, and we 

 caught here the bus going southward to Seaside Park where we were to stop 

 for the night. After lunch, again through the careful planning of Dr. Small, 

 we went by automobile southward to Island Beach, one of the wildest places 

 on the New Jersey coast. This area forming the northern barrier-beach of 

 Barnegat Bay is many miles in length, and since it has been kept under private 

 ownership it is still relatively undisturbed. The dunes on the oceanside were 

 especially colorful with carpets of Hudsonia tomentosa, the yellow flowers pro- 

 jecting only an inch or so above the shifting sand. Here the prize find was 

 Car ex macrocephala, now to be called Car ex Kobomugi. The staminate and 

 pistillate plants are separate in the species, which forms deep-rooted mats in 

 the shifting dunes. Except for a station at Cape Henry, Virginia, it is not other- 

 wise known on the Atlantic coast ; its presence is undoubtedly due to marine 

 shipping. Crossing to the bayward side all of our party were greatly pleased 

 with the large trees of various sorts which had been dwarfed and cut into fan- 

 tastic shapes by the wind. Here were junipers, holHes with trunks a foot or so 

 in diameter, splendid examples of the southern red oak (Quercus jalcata) 

 which reaches its northern limit at about this area, and large patches of our 

 native cactus (Opuntia compressa) . 



Some of us were even more interested in the vast and variable numbers of 

 blueberries which filled the bushes in the damp hollows. Some of these hollows 

 had sphagnum with the pink orchid {Pogonia ophioglossoides) and in one of 

 the little depressions were plants of the smallest of the bladderworts. Utri- 

 cular ia cleistogama. In all these hollows there were also plenty of mosquitoes. 

 This long tongue of land is only a few hundred yards in width and the sheltered 

 bayside was soon reached. Here just above the high-water mark were vast 

 rows of the so-called ditch grass (Ruppia maritima), cast up by the tide, and 

 just one fragment of the related Zannichellia was found. Along these beaches 

 were numerous plants of the sow thistle (Sonchus arvensis) with attractive 

 large yellow flowers, a species not common in our region. The salt marsh just 

 to the southward was investigated by some of the members, in spite of the 

 mosquitoes, and here were found numerous clumps of Kosteletskya virginica, a 

 mallow characteristic of salt marshes and reaching its northern limits on Long 

 Island and the Hackensack Meadows. By this time some of the members of the 

 group had become isolated in various blueberry thickets and others were al- 

 ready beginning the homeward journey of three or four miles to Seaside Park. 

 Among the interesting plants along the road were several clumps of roses of 

 which the identity has not yet been established. In one of the roadside ditches 

 were found two clumps of purple loosestrife, Lythrum Salicaria, hitherto un- 

 reported from this region. 



