Two important studies in plant ecology published in 

 unexpected places 



Roland M. Harper 



Important botanical contributions occasionally turn up in 

 non-botanical literature. Two such items, of considerable in- 

 terest to ecologists, have been unearthed recently, several years 

 after their publication, in the chemical and geological libraries 

 at the University of Alabama. The first was brought to my 

 attention by the professor of chemistry, and the second I came 

 across in looking up literature for a geological bibliography. 1 



The first is by W. G. Bateman and Lansing S. Wells, chem- 

 ists at the University of Montana, on Copper in the flora of a 

 copper-tailing region, in the Journal of the American Chemical 

 Society, 39: 811-819. April, 1917. It deals with a copper smelter 

 near Anaconda, Montana, and contains partial analyses of the 

 ash of several plants growing in tailings and mine waters, with 

 special reference to copper, which is well known to be very 

 toxic to some of the lower plants. Considerable arsenic, anti- 

 mony, zinc and other metals were found in the soils, and sul- 

 phuric acid in the water, which made a very unfavorable habitat 

 for most plants, large areas being entirely bare of vegetation. 

 But the willows (Salix fluviatilis) were not completely killed, 

 and Dasiphora fruticosa, 2 Rosa Woodsii, Agropyron lanceolatwn , 

 and Equisetum variegatum stood the abnormal conditions re- 

 markably well. 



In the trees and shrubs the copper was found to be chiefly 

 concentrated in the bark, as if that was the plant's best way of 

 getting rid of it. All the plants that tolerated copper and the 

 other metals named also grew in natural soils in the same neigh- 

 borhood that contained no appreciable amounts of them. 3 



1 Bibliography of Alabama geology. Geol. Surv. Ala., Bull. 42, pp. 59-116. 

 January, 1935. This contains references to 15 papers on fossil plants, among 

 other things. 



2 As most readers of Torreya doubtless know, Dasiphora fruticosa (for- 

 merly included in Potentilla) is a Rosaceous shrub, common in some of the lime- 

 stone regions of northwestern Connecticut and adjacent New York, if it is all 

 the same species. 



3 Another way in which copper smelting is injurious to vegetation, men- 

 tioned only incidentally by Bateman and Wells, is by producing sulphurous 

 fumes. Around the smelters of Ducktown and Copper Hill, Tennessee, vegeta- 



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