\ 
FLORAS OF EASTERN AND WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND 245 
floating amongst the Juncus culms were the characteristic leaves and 
delicate flowers of Nymphoides lacunosum, with Potamogeton dimorphus 
and other southern species abundant. Going into the most character- 
istic tundra itself, for instance the vast tundra-region of bog and 
shallow pools near the station Quarry, one finds the arctic plants 
disappointingly few and only such species as are equally Hudsonian 
and Canadian in range. Pond-holes here, in the most highly developed 
tundra, are again full of Juncus militaris, or Carex exilis, C. livida or 
Scirpus suhterminalis of the New Jersey pine barrens, while the pine 
barren Potamogeton confervoides fills the pools and the bushy patches 
are bordered by Carex folliculata, a species extending to Florida and 
Louisiana. In autumn, after the long August drouth, the little pools 
of the tundra have mostly dried away leaving peaty depressions which 
are carpeted with Lycopodium inundatum, Eriocaulon septangular e, 
Bartonia iodandra, the Newfoundland representative of the coastal 
plain genus Bartonia, Schizaea pusilla, the famous curly grass of the 
New Jersey pine barrens, Xyris montana, the northern outlyer of the 
austral and coastal plain genus Xyris, and many other southern specie^, 
the enumeration of which would become wearisome. 
Similarly in southwestern Newfoundland, in the Carboniferous 
sandstones about Bay St. George, is a flora which is decidedly austral 
and disappointing to one who goes to the region looking for boreal 
plants: tremendous sphagnous bogs with an abundance of Arethusa, 
Calopogon, Hahenaria hlephariglottis or Carex exilis, just as if one were 
botanizing in New Jersey, while the drier areas furnish Melampyrum 
linear e, Carex intumescens , Salix humilis, Diervilla Lonicera, Populus 
tremuloides, and others making a tedious and uninteresting flora. 
Now from this statement, which is a very brief summary of the 
conditions in the flora of Newfoundland, it must be apparent that the 
highly silicious or acid areas, such as the extreme eastern region of 
Newfoundland, the central tundra district, and the southwestern 
corner, are populated chiefly by plants of coastal plain origin with an 
admixture of species belonging primarily in the acid soils of Europe, 
which reached the island by way of the continental shelf; while the 
calcareous west coast and North Peninsula is characterized by a flora 
which finds its great development here and in the calcareous arctic 
archipelago and the calcareous Canadian Rocky Mountains. Yet 
the west coast with its arctic flora is the warm, sunny, and most fertile 
region of the island, while the east coast is the cold, bleak, and more 
