THE CONTRAST IN THE FLORAS OF EASTERN AND 
WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND! 
M. L. Fernald 
The island of Newfoundland, with an area of more than 42,000 
square miles, has a flora as yet only partially worked out, but suffi- 
ciently known to indicate a surprising degree of complexity in its 
makeup. The first impression gained by a casual observer in crossing 
Newfoundland is that the flora, as one visiting botanist has said, is an 
attenuated Canadian flora; but further study of the details and a 
careful daily record of observations on the plants of the island through 
several seasons of exploration has clearly emphasized that the attenua- 
tion of the Canadian element is one of the most conspicuous features 
of the Newfoundland flora. For, although lying in the latitudes of 
eastern Canada, Newfoundland has an almost negligible strictly 
Canadian element in its flora. The number of species characteristic 
of eastern Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Gaspe 
Peninsula) and also found upon Newfoundland is made up primarily 
of such plants as extend their northeastern ranges along the north 
shore of the St. Lawrence quite to the Straits of Belle Isle and have 
obviously reached Newfoundland by crossing the narrow Straits. 
Besides this meager Canadian flora which has been derived chiefly 
by way of its northeastern extension to the Straits of Belle Isle, the 
essential elements of the Newfoundland flora are three: (i) the arctic- 
alpine and Hudsonian elements, of somewhat broad distribution in 
the arctic regions or in Labrador; (2) the coastal plain element, a 
group of species abundant to the southwest of Newfoundland, chiefly in 
coastwise New England, Long Island and New Jersey; (3) the Atlantic 
European element, species characteristic of the region from the Baltic 
or the English Channel to the Mediterranean; while the endemic 
species and varieties are all closely related to members of the other 
four groups and should, in point of origin, be classed with them. 
As I have elsewhere shown, ^ the essential absence of the plants one 
^ Presented at the joint session of the Botanical Society of America and the 
Ecological Society of America at Pittsburgh, i January, 1918. 
2 Rhodora, 13: 141, 142. 1911. 
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