78 



conditions, as Prof. Fernald points out, are quite like those of 

 northern Labrador and south Greenland. 



Lichens were not as numerous and robust on this exposed 

 table land as I expected. Cladonia alpestris occurred but in 

 small, narrow heads, much smaller than at lower altitudes along 

 the mine road. Cetraria islandica, though common, was shorter, 

 more stunted looking, than on high summits in the White 

 Mountains, Green Mountains or Adirondacks, or even in the 

 Palisades Interstate Park. We considered two theories to ac- 

 count for this: one, that the lichens are uncovered so short a 

 time that they do not reach the more robust sizes of less bleak 

 locations; another, that the caribou browse on them, for in 

 winter, when the forest below 2,500 feet is covered five feet 

 deep in snow, the summit of Albert is relatively bare, owing to 

 the high winds which blow much of the snow off the table land, 

 into great banks below. The caribou then betake themselves 

 to the summit where they can plough through the snow with 

 their frontal horns to find sufficient forage. 



We did find one uncommon Cladonia, just a small colony, 

 near the biggest of the ice fields, at about 3,300 feet. Dr. Evans 

 identified it as C. lepidota (Sandst.) or C. lepidota, var. graciles- 

 cens, (Du Rietz). It seems to have affinities, in the form of its 

 podetia and cups, with C. degenerans, of rather more southern 

 latitudes, and somewhat more remotely, with C. verticillata, 

 common in our club range. Sandstede records it from such 

 northern latitudes as Nova Zembla, and Mrs. Joyce Hedrick 

 Jones found it on Unalaska Island, Alaska, last summer. (Mich. 

 Acad. 1936, p. 77.) 



Much of the sod on the top of the mountain and fillings of 

 crevices in the raggedly eroded peridotite, worn into strange 

 shapes by millions of years or pre-glacial erosion, without the 

 smoothing by ice sheets which we are accustomed to see in the 

 northern parts of our club range, is made up of a moss new to 

 us, with whitish leaf tips, which Dr. A. J. Grout named as 

 Rhacomitrium lanuginosum. 



Another odd looking flowering plant, found all the way up 

 the mountain, was a pale, greenish-yellow form of the Painted 

 Cup, Castilleja pallida, var. septentrionalis , ranging from Lab- 

 rador and Newfoundland, to the high mountains of New 

 England, and to Minnesota and the Black Hills of South Da- 



