- ';-. AR Y 

 BW YORK 



T O R R E Y A B ^ N D r 



GARDEN 



Vol. 33 November-December, 1933 No. 6 



Distribution and spread of Serapias Helleborine in 

 New York State 



H. D. House 



The number of extralimital species of plants which have 

 found a place in our flora is so large that only occasionally is 

 there more than passing comment regarding any of them. They 

 are chiefly the so-called "weeds" of our cultivated and waste 

 fields, meadows and cut over woodlands. Some species like 

 Epilobium hirsutum and Lythrum Salicaria have within recent 

 years become conspicuous and not altogether undesirable ele- 

 ments of the flora of our river borders and other wet places 

 across the state. 



In the eastern United States the orchid family (Orchidaceae) 

 contains but a single naturalized species, Serapias Helleborine 

 L. How it first reached our shores is now impossible to say, nor 

 is it certain that it came through a single introduction. The first 

 discovery of it was made near Syracuse by Mrs. M. O. Rust, 

 August 2, 1879 and by Miss M. P. Church, August 6, 1879 

 (Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 6: 329. 1879). It was next found near 

 Canandaigua, July 22, 1881, by members of the Canandaigua 

 Botanical Club, near Buffalo, by David F. Day, in 1882, and 

 near Rochester by M. S. Baxter in 1894. Between 1900 and 1910 

 only two or three additional localities were added to this list, 

 but since 1910, due perhaps to the more rapid spread of the 

 species and more intensive field work on the part of local bota- 

 nists, the species has been found eastward to the Hudson river 

 valley and northward to the St. Lawrence. 



The plant is not mentioned by Macoun (Cat. Canadian 

 Plants Pt. IV, 1888), and the earliest Canadian records which 

 I can find are collections in the National Herbarium at Wash- 

 ington from Lambton Mills, Ontario (near Toronto), by W. and 

 O. White, July 1890, and near Montreal by G. B. Ashford, 

 July 31, 1904. 



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