24 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 



Upon this conception, the Downs show infinite gradations between, as 

 after temporary slides of sand and gravel, perfect nakedness and the 

 attempt to produce some sort of woody vegetation. Because such a large 

 part of Montauk Point is occupied by these open Downs, where available 

 water is scarce, and the exposure to the winds is terrific, all expectation of a 

 rapid development of forest is certainly hopeless. Where that one element, 

 water, is added, as in the kettleholes, and there is protection from the wind, 

 the change is abrupt and convincing. With almost perfect drainage, a 

 little less than the average Long Island rainfall, but with twice the wind, 

 with no shade, and even now a few cattle at large, the wonder is not that 

 the Downs has developed a struggling tree here and there, but that it 

 has not stayed permanently and exclusively grassland. At least some 

 evidence from the plants points the other way, and as we shall see, there 

 are other phases of the Montauk vegetation, beside the Downs, which seem 

 to argue that vegetation, like the grassland, or the patches of "bush," or 

 the kettleholes, is a complex organism that is born, develops, and ultimately 

 reaches a climax of its career before death, or transition to something else. 

 In such a scheme the Downs vegetation is in one of the earliest, and it 

 may well be arrested, stages of development, where the grassland pre- 

 dominates, slightly more developed where patches of "bush' have started, 

 still farther along where such patches have nurtured a small tree, which 

 in the end, may form a nucleus for a new type of growth, made up of shrubs 

 and trees, which is near the climax condition. It should not be overlooked 

 that while the climax seems to be the forest, it is the youngest, because the 

 most recently developed, of all the types of vegetation now found on the 

 Downs, as the grassland is the oldest. Large areas of grassland have no 

 Myrica in them, and in spite of a rainfall that should permit forest covering, 

 may be edaphically incapable of producing it. Such areas, with apparently 

 permanent grassland on them, are certainly examples of an arrested climax. 

 Rainfall would normally permit forest cover, but wind velocity and in- 

 sufficient retention of water on the slopes are inhibiting factors that are 

 strong enough to stop, or make incredibly slow and difficult, the develop- 

 ment of forest cover. 



No account of the Downs would be complete without note of two 

 interesting plants that have been introduced. The cloudberry or mountain 

 bramble {Rubus Chamaemorus) , at home in the Arctic, and on alpine 

 summits of New England, was found between the Inn and Culloden Point 

 on August 21, 1908, by Dr. William C. Braislin, who deposited specimens 

 in the herbarium of the Museum in Brooklyn, since housed at the Brooklyn 

 Botanic Garden. Diligent search has since failed to disclose this plant, 



