FIELD TRIPS OF THE CLUB 

 Sunday December 13, Tomkins Cove to Bear Mountain 



A party of twelve members and guests made the field trip 

 on Sunday, December 13, from Tomkins Cove to Bear Moun- 

 tain, part of the time in heavy rain, but found many objects of 

 botanical interest which made the weather of no consequence. 

 Perhaps the most notable discovery was a large colony of the 

 Purple Cliff Brake, Pellaea atro- purpurea, growing on a stone 

 wall, on the path from Tomkins Cove station up to the state 

 highway. The wall was built of blocks of granite and gneiss, and 

 the fern did not grow on the blocks, but on the mortar joining 

 them. The mortar, containing lime, supplied the calcium which 

 is usually required by this species. Although it is said to grow 

 on gneiss and trap rock, the writer has never seen it in this 

 territory except on limestone in western New Jersey, the Wall- 

 kill Valley and the Harlem Valley in New York. It does not 

 occur on the granites and gneisses in the Hudson Highlands. 

 How it was established on the mortar of this wall, which is 

 perhaps fifty years old, is an interesting speculation. Some such 

 chance as established the colony of Walking Fern, Camptosorus 

 rhizophyllus on a limestone boulder, transported by the glacial 

 ice from the Wallkill Valley to the shore of Upper Cohasset 

 Lake, in the Harriman State Park, possibly transportation of 

 spores on the feet of birds, may have started the Purple Cliff 

 Brake colony at Tomkins Cove. There are at least fifty plants 

 on a length of 100 feet of wall, most of them on the inside, facing 

 the east, but probably those on the outside have been plucked 

 out by passersby. 



Lichens, which were the particular objective of this trip, 

 were numerous and in fine condition, plump and fresh looking 

 by absorption of moisture from the rain. One of the most strik- 

 ing was the flesh pink Baeomyces roseus, of which colonies cover- 

 ing several square yards were seen, one of the largest being on 

 the dump of the long abandoned Doodletown iron mine, another 

 on a loamy bank beside the Seven Lakes Drive in Bear Moun- 

 tain Park. This lichen, looking like a timy pink mushroom, is a 

 lovely thing. 



Cladonias were numerous. The scarlet fruited Cladonia cris- 

 tatella, in the forms Beauvoisii, with naked podetia; vestita, 



15 



