Vol. 44 T O R R E Y A J uly 1944 



REVIEWS 



A Local Flora of Virginia 



The vegetation and floristics of Bull Run Mountain, Virginia. By H. A. Allard and E. C. 

 Leonard. Castanea 8: 1-64. 7 fig. (fig. 1, map). 1943. 



The botanical investigation of the present United States began with the 

 work of John Banister in Virginia about the year 1678 and reached its earliest 

 peak in Gronovius' Flora Virginica (1739-43), which was based on the collec- 

 tions by John Clayton, mainly in Tidewater Virginia, and is the most 

 important single source for the names of North American plants in Linnaeus' 

 Species Plantarum of 1753. With the publication of Gronovius' flora systema- 

 tic botanical investigations in Virginia practically ceased until near the end of 

 the nineteenth century. 



Small and Vail's report on a summer's investigation in the mountains of 

 southwestern Virginia appeared in 1893-94, Kearney's report on the Dismal 

 Swamp region in 1901, Murrill's alphabetically arranged list of the plants of 

 Staunton in 1919, E. W. Erlanson's list of the flora of the peninsula of Vir- 

 ginia in 1925, Merriman's popular flora of Richmond in 1930, and Fosberg 

 and Walker's list of the plants of Shenandoah National Park in 1941. The 

 Committee on Flora of the Virginia Academy of Sciences was organized in 

 1926, and has done considerable local work; and in 1933 Fernald began the 

 fruitful series of explorations of the coastal plain of Virginia which have added 

 so many species to the flora of the Gray's Manual range. Despite this recent 

 activity, Virginia is still one of the half dozen states for which no state list has 

 ever been written, and until the publication of the paper here noticed it did not 

 possess a single local flora based on sufficiently intensive and long-continued 

 field work to justify its being regarded as essentially complete. 



The area covered by Allard and Leonard's paper includes about 33 square 

 miles of the Piedmont region in Loudoun, Fauquier, and Prince William Coun- 

 ties in northeastern Virginia, at an elevation of about 600 to 1300 feet, descend- 

 ing at the north and south ends to about 250 ft. It consists for the most part 

 of steep ridges capped with quartzite and sandstones (Cambrian), separated 

 by narrow valleys drained by cold brooks, with conglomerate bluffs along 

 Broad Run and red sandstones, shales, and conglomerates (Triassic) toward 

 the eastern edge of the area. Slightly more than half the territory is wooded, 

 the remainder being devoted to cultivation or pasturage. There are few streams 

 and no ponds. 



The original (climax) forest of the highlands was composed principally of 

 chestnut oak (Quercus montana) and chestnut, with red oak, sour gum, tulip- 



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