s 
NOTES ON THE VEGETATION OF THE LOWER 
WABASH VALLEY. 
BY ROBERT RIDGWAY. 
1. THE FORESTS OF THE BOTTOM LANDS. 
Taar portion of the valley of the Wabash River and its trib- 
utaries lying south of latitude about 38° 25' contains a sylva 
peculiarly rich, and also remarkable for combining within one area 
many of the characteristic trees, as well as other plants, of the 
northern, southern and southwestern portions of the United States, 
besides supporting the vegetation common to the whole Atlantic — 
region or “ Eastern Province.” In this section of the country 
many species of the botanical districts named, in receding from 
their several centres of abundance, overlap each other, or reach 
their latitudinal or longitudinal limits of natural distribution; 
thus with the beech, sugar maple, the various oaks and other trees 
of the north, grow the bald cypress, the tupelo gum and the water 
locust of the south, and the catalpa and pecan of the southwest; 
while other trees such as the buckeyes, honey locust, black locust, 
coffee-bean, etc., especially characteristic of the country west of 
the Alleghanies, reach here their maximum of abundance. At 
the same time other trees of more extended distribution, our 
scarcely anywhere else to such majestic size as they do here = is 
the rich alluvial bottoms, the deep soil of which nourishes a q 
walnuts, tulip trees, sycamores, white ashes and sweet gums © 
astonishing dimensions. 
reach a maximum height of over twenty feet; Tn the 
uted through about twenty-five orders and fifty genera — 
heavy forests of the rich bottom lands more than mks ae 
usually grow together, though in various localities differen 
are the predominating ones. bie 
The trees which usualy attain the largest size are eet” 
ing species, named nearly in the order of their wpe ilip 
sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), tulip-poplar (irion (Que ii 
ifera), pecan (Carya olivæformis), over-cup Or bur-pas Iw 
(658). ; 
