WILD FLOWERS OF NEW YORK 



INTRODUCTION 



The State of New York possesses a large variety of herbaceous and 

 shrubby plants with conspicuous flowers, which may be classed under the 

 rather broad and indefinite term of "' wild flowers." For the purposes of 

 this work only a few of the shrubs, such as the Mountain Laurel, Azalea 

 and Labrador Tea have been included, the thought being to present mainly 

 herbaceous plants with conspicuous flowers. 



Anyone who has observed the natural vegetation in such unlike parts 

 of the State as the salt marshes and pine barrens of Long Island, the higher 

 Adirondack and Catskill mountains or the woodlands of the western counties 

 must have been impressed by the obvious difference in the wild flowers of 

 those several sections, and especially by the fact that very few of the 

 wild flowers which bloom between early spring and late autumn in the 

 Adirondacks are to be found on Long Island. 



Such differences in the character of the vegetation of widely separated 

 portions of the State are explained partly by soil conditions and partly by 

 differences in climate. Located with the ocean at one side and the great 

 inland lakes at the other, the State is favored by conditions of atmospheric 

 moisture (relative humidity, rainfall and snowfall) which make it climati- 

 cally a forest region, and hence favorable for a luxuriant variety of herbace- 

 ous and shrubby plants ; a region in which forests would naturally dominate 

 all other vegetation if not cut down. The temperature conditions along 

 the southern coast of the State are modified by the ocean, and to some 

 extent on the west by the Great Lakes, while the elevated mountain masses 

 of the Adirondack and Catskill regions produce cooler summers and shorter 

 growing seasons. 



I am indebted to Mr Edward A. Eames of Buffalo for photographs and 

 autochromes of certain orchids, to Mr G. A. Bailey of Geneseo, and Mr O. O. 

 Ny lander of Caribou, Me., for additional photographs and to Mr Louis R. 

 Robbins, former assistant to State Botanist, for assistance in the preparation 

 of the text and illustrations for the chapter on Plant Structure. 



