SOME PHASES OE PLANT DISTRIBUTION. 

 By Wiixard N. Clute. 



There seems to be no accounting for the way in which some 

 plants are distributed over certain sections of country. Who is 

 there who cannot recall some long and careful search for a plant 

 which ought to grow in his own locality, but which must always 

 be set down among the missing, although common enough just 

 over the border in the territory of a rival. No matter how well 

 stocked with botanical rarities one's own collecting grounds may 

 be, it is always exasperating to reflect that some common weed 

 has not been found, especially if he knows of spots in which 

 every condition for its growth seems favorable. The situation 

 is aggravated if the adjoining territory holds some particularly 

 active botanist who thoroughly enjoys sending you rare speci- 

 mens from his own region with a tantalizing note suggesting that 

 your collecting ground is not of much account if it cannot match 

 his own in the matter of that particular plant. 



One gains a temporary satisfaction when he manages to 

 ferret out specimens of the same plant from his own region, or 

 better still, finds something new with which to give his friend 

 " a Roland for his Oliver," but so long as his own section is not 

 credited with all the common species that, according to the botan- 

 ical manuals, should be there, he is not likely to rest satisfied. 



There are several of these plants missing from my own 

 locality that I am sure would have been reported long ago if this 

 merely depended upon careful searching to bring it about. One 

 of these is the wild indigo (Baptisia tinctoria) so common in the 

 sandy soil of Long Island, New Jersey and parts of New Eng- 

 land, not to mention localities further south and west. We seem 

 to be well within the limits of its range, but not a plant is to be 

 found. And yet, we barely miss it, for in journeying hither 

 from New York, we constantly see its great globular tufts of 

 green in dryish places as the train toils up the Delaware valley, 

 and it is not until the final spurt is made over the summit and 

 down into the Susquehanna valley that Baptisia drops out of the 

 race. Not ten miles beyond our region it grows, and Dr. C. F. 



