FIELD TRIPS OF THE CLUB 



WEST VIRGINIA FIELD TRIP, MAY 29-JUXE 2 



Five members of the Torrey Botanical Club enjoyed a foray 

 in the mountains of the Monongahela National Forest of eastern 

 West Virginia over the Memorial Day week-end. This trip 

 should be an annual one of the club. Its success was due to the 

 preliminary scouting and guidance of Rev. Fred W. Gray of 

 Philippi, W.Ya., a Methodist minister, who finds time among 

 numerous parish duties to be one of the most extensive collec- 

 tors of lichens and mosses in America and to correspond with 

 German lichen specialists, one of whom, Dr. Heinrich Sand- 

 stede, has named a cupped lichen, Cladonia Grayi. 



The party left Jersey City Wednesday evening, and reached 

 Davis, West Ya., at 2 p.m., on Thursday where Mr. Gray, and 

 his daughter, Miss Henrietta, were waiting. He led us at once 

 to Canaan Mountain, where he had spent the forenoon marking 

 out species in which he thought we would be most interested. 



He showed us Cladonia brevis, and digitata, the second inter- 

 esting to find so far south, and commoner species. A little 

 Cetraria islandica was found on the summit, at 4,000 feet. Then 

 we drove to Canaan Swamp, where we found much Cladonia 

 gracilis, f. dilatata in a spruce swamp at 3,500 feet, suggestive of 

 the occurrences of this species in the Adirondacks and northern 

 New England. A stately herb in this swamp, new to us, was 

 Euphorbia Darlingtoni, three feet tall, with very large yellowish 

 green bracts. 



On Friday, Mr. Gray could not be with us, but he had ar- 

 ranged with Supervisor A. W. Wood of the Monongahela Na- 

 tional Forest, for our guidance to Spruce Knob, 4,860 feet, from 

 a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp on Laurel Branch. On the 

 way in from Elkins, on a ridge east of Shaver's Branch of Cheat 

 River, we saw Clintonia umbellulata, a beautiful plant, and 

 plenty of Trillium undulatum. From the C.C.C. camp, one of 

 Mr. Wood's rangers led us over narrow, rocky roads, up and 

 down steep mountainsides, through the Sinks, a limestone region 

 where the streams disappear and reappear, to the foot of Spruce 

 Knob, to the summit of which we had to climb only about 800 

 feet in altitude. 



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