10 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



A slight deposit of rotted stone seems to be the only ma- 

 terial the plants have to root in, and it is a wonder that even 

 this is not washed off by some of the hardest storms. There 

 must be days and possibly weeks at a time when there is no 

 more moisture on this top than there would be on a tin roof,' 

 yet we find here strong healthy plants, many of them evergreen, 

 producing flowers and fruit in a situation apparently unsuited 

 to any form of plant life. Pygmy spruces one or two feet high, 

 but probably as old as many of the large spruces farther down 

 the mountain, are scattered over the top and down the sides 

 wherever there is a chance for a foothold. A few other dwarf 

 plants which might have been trees under more favorable con- 

 ditions occur also, among them white birch, red maple, and 

 mountain ash. It is doubtful if these trees would live as long 

 in this situation as the spruces. 



There were several large beds of mountain cranberry on the 

 summit with an abundance of fresh, finely flavored fruit, to us 

 much more palatable uncooked than is the large market cran- 

 berry, though this is contrary to the opinions of many writers. 

 One calls them ''bitter acid." The fruit as we found it here had 

 not a trace of bitter. Cold and frost may be necessary to give 

 them their full flavor. I have never eaten them before freezing 

 weather. Mr. J. M. Macoun says : "The fruit of the mountain 

 cranberry is considered of no value in the warmer parts of 

 Canada, but in the cold, rocky woods of the North, along the 

 shores of Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean it seems to gain in 

 size and flavor out of the very conditions that dwarf and 

 destroy its less hard)^ competitors, for there it is acid and not 

 acrid and pronounced to be the equal, by those who have eaten 

 it there, of the cranberry. May not something be due to the 

 appetite of the eater in that northern clime?" The berries are 

 often eaten by birds in preference to other food and they form 

 a favorite food for the black and polar bears. 



