25 



Touristen Verein die Naturfreunde, (the Nature Friends), who 

 have a camp on the slope; proved to be steep and "sporty" in 

 places, with steeply slanting ledges, narrow crevices and over- 

 hanging cliffs. The summit is clothed with dense fir and spruce. 

 A log observatory raises one above the trees and gives a full 

 circle view of the entire Catskills and the Hudson Valley. The 

 descent to Tannersville was easy, through changing zones of 

 fir and spruce, yellow birch and mountain maple, beech and 

 finally open pastures with sugar maple and hay-scented fern. 



In trees and shrubs and herbaceous flowering plants, one 

 rarely finds anything uncommon in the Catskills. There is not 

 so much variety of species as in the Highlands of the Hudson. 

 A limited number of phanerogamous species appears to have 

 adjusted itself to the altitude, soil and moisture conditions and 

 the association seems rather exclusive. One finds, above 3000 

 feet, northern species such as Goldthread, Twisted Stalk, Twin- 

 flower and Bunchberry, but there are no alpine plants such as 

 Sibbaldiopsis and Arenaria which might be looked for at 3500 

 feet, and are found at lower altitudes in the Taconics, 40 miles 

 east. The dense forest cover on the Catskill sandstone had 

 evidently killed off any alpine species, which are found on the 

 bare Taconics, of more ancient schists. Several species of Lyco- 

 podium were found, including annotinum, lucidulum, clavatum, 

 obscurum and complanatum. 



On Sunday morning the party, now numbering a dozen, and 

 with another car, that of Miss Griffin, who had been calling on 

 Dr. Gunderson, at Maplecrest, motored leisurely homeward. A 

 stop was made in Stony Clove, where Dr. Grout collected sev- 

 eral mosses; and another at the Olive Bridge Dam, on Ashokan 

 Reservoir, to view the aerator and the mountain panorama. 

 The rest of the route was via New Paltz, Newburgh and Bear 

 Mountain. 



Raymond H. Torrey 



Field Trip of November 9 



Seven members of the club met at White Plains for a trip 

 through the woods near Silver Lake. A search was made for 

 wild flowers of which twenty three species were found, all of 

 them occasional blossoms that had persisted far beyond the 



