UBRAtt 



NEW YorfK 



TORREYA 



Vol. 25 No. 6 



November-December, 1925 



ferns and flowering plants of the 

 hempste:ad plains, long island, 



NEW YORK 

 William C. Ferguson 



The Hempstead Plains will soon be a memory. Sul)urban 

 building, farming, and golf links are fast encroaching on this 

 prairie. The writer is familiar with two publications relating to 

 the Hempstead Plains* and although the following list is in 

 large part a repetition of plants recorded in the publications 

 referred to, it includes some others. The list is confined entirely 

 to plants collected or observed by the writer during the past 

 five years. All introduced plants, those growing on abandoned 

 fields, or by the roadsides, have been excluded, so that only 

 plants native to the Plains are recorded. 



This list is incomplete, for the writer rarely goes out on the 

 Plains without finding at least one plant not seen by him before. 

 The names used agree with Britton & Brown's Illustrated Flora, 

 with the exception of the genus Kneiffia, which is treated ac- 

 cording to Pennell, Bull. Torrey Club 46: 363-373. Oct., 1919, 

 and Gramineae, according to Hitchcock & Chase. Except in 

 Kneiffia and in the Gramineae, therefore, the authorities for the 

 names are omitted. 



The Hempstead Plains are mostly open, dry prairie, but there 

 are two swampy areas, Meadowbrook stream and swamp, south 

 of Westbury; and a stream and swamp northeast of the village 

 of Hempstead, and some acres of woods, mostly Finns rigida, 

 south of Hicksville and near the southern edge of the Plains, 

 locally known as the Isle of Pines. 



Those plants marked P were found on the open plains. 



Those plants marked I were found in the Isle of Pines. 



* Hicks, Henry. Flora of the Hempstead Plains, Long Island. Thesis. 

 Cornell Univ. 1892. 



Harpe*-, R. M. Vegetation of the Hempstead Plains. Memoirs Torrey 

 Club 17: 262-286. June 1918. 



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