Upham.] 
146 
[May 21, 
(Enothera albicaulis, Nutt., which occurs chiefly as an immigrant 
weed, and the small-leaved false indigo (Amorpha microphylla, 
Pursh), which abounds on moist portions of the prairie. The 
silver-berry (usually called “wolf willow” in the Red river val- 
ley) is common or abundant from Clifford, North Dakota, and 
from Ada, Minnesota, northward, forming patches ten to twenty 
rods long on the prairie, growing only about two feet high and 
fruiting plentifully, but in thickets becoming five to ten feet high. 
Its silvery whitish foliage and fruit make this shrub a very con- 
spicuous and characteristic element of the Red river flora. 
The single species of true sage-brush belonging to this basin 
(Artemisia cana, Pursh) extends east in North Dakota to the 
Heart Mound, six miles northwest of Walhalla or thirty-five miles 
west of the Red river at Pembina, and to a hill close west of the 
Sheyenne river about eight miles south of Valley City, growing in 
both places on outcrops of the Fort Pierre shale. It attains a 
height of one to three feet, and the tough wood of its base is one 
to one and a half inches in diameter. Artemisia frigida, Willd., 
called “ pasture sage-brush” by Macoun, is abundant throughout 
a wide area westward, extending east locally to “ the ridge” east 
of Emerson, Manitoba, the falls of St. Anthony, and lake Pepin. 
Herbaceous plants . — Among the fifteen hundred, more or less-, in- 
digenous species of herbaceous plants inhabiting the Red river ba- 
sin, probably half are deserving of note for attaining their geo- 
graphic limit upon this area, or at least the limit of their abundant 
or frequent occurrence. But thorough and detailed botanic explo- 
ration of all the great interior region of our continent westward to 
the Rocky Mountains and far northward will be requisite before we 
can speak with certainty concerning many of the less conspicuous 
species of our flora. The most that can be attempted in this es- 
say is to notice those plants whose geographic range seems to be 
best known, especially such as are abundant in some part of the 
Red river basin, or are attractive by their beautiful flowers, or use- 
ful for pasturage and hay. 
The following species of northern range, some of them plentiful 
beneath the Arctic circle, are known to extend south of the 49th 
parallel in the Red river valley, or on the east to the Lake of the 
Woods or into northern Minnesota, but not to the southern end of 
this valley at Lake Traverse. 
