77 



A NEW HEART-LEAF AND OTHER INTERESTING 

 PLANTS FROM AUTAUGA COUNTY, ALABAMA 



Roland M. Harper 



In May, 1924, on my way to my principal southern head- 

 quarters in Alabama after a few months' work in Florida, I 

 spent a week-end (17th to 19th) with an ornithologist friend, 

 Ernest G. Holt, at the home of his uncle, Lewis S. Golsan — a 

 farmer and naturalist — near Booth in Autauga County. Booth 

 is a railroad junction about six miles west-northwest of Prattville, 

 the county-seat, and Mr. Golsan's farm is about two miles east 

 of Booth and five miles from Prattville by road, and about one- 

 half mile west of Bridge Creek, which flows in a general southerly 

 direction toward the Alabama River. 



The locality under consideration is just about at the southern 

 edge of what I have described as the long-leaf pine hills division 

 of the central pine belt of Alabama.* Its underlying strata are 

 pinkish and yellowish sands and sandy clays, near the top of 

 the Tuscaloosa formation (fresh-water Cretaceous), and the 

 soils are rather sandy. A mile or so to the southward, across 

 the Mobile & Ohio R. R. and the valley of Autauga Creek, is 

 a steep wooded escarpment perhaps 200 feet high (which at 

 Prattville looks like a small mountain), of the Eutaw formation, 

 which overlies the Tuscaloosa and is at least partly of marine 

 origin, and gives rise to somewhat richer soils. 



The northern part of Mr. Golsan's farm is higher than the 

 house, and two or three small streams (branches), originating 

 in seepage springs, flow down the slope toward the house, and 

 soon unite into a larger one flowing into Bridge Creek. Around 

 the heads of some of the branches are small areas of sandy bog 

 similar to those described from the same region by the writer 

 a few years ago,t and a little farther down the streams flow 

 through small swamps with the neighboring slopes more "meso- 

 phytic," having a small accumulation of humus. The uplands 

 between the branches are in some places dry and sandy, with 

 pine-barren vegetation, and elsewhere more fertile, with more 

 deciduous trees and shrubs. 



On the east side of Bridge Creek, about half a mile from !Mr. 



* Geol. Surv. Ala., Monog. 8, pp. 78-81. 1913. 

 fTorreya 22: 57-60. 1922. 



