Abstract
THIS excellent contribution to the flora of the United States has been compiled at the suggestion of the State Horticultural Society of Michigan. It is prefaced with a list of the various catalogues, from that by Dr. Jno. Wright, embracing 850 species, and published in 1839, to that of Dr. Palmer in 1877. With reference to its flora the Peninsula may be roughly divided into two great divisions—the hard wood and the soft wood-lands—one representing the Appalachian flora, the other the Canadian. The hard-wood country lies south of latitude 43°, and consists of very fertile sand, clay, or loam, mostly cleared of the original forest and largely cultivated. The upper Peninsula has a much colder climate than that of the lower Peninsula, and its flora is in many respects decidedly northern. Pines, fir, cedar, larch, elms, poplars, maples, and birch, are among the principal trees; the proximity of the great lakes exerts a marked influence on equalising the temperature, and the effects thereof are well seen. Trees like Liriodendron tulipifera, Cercis canadensis, Gleditschia triacanthos, Cornus florida, and Morus rubra, which belong to Ohio and Central Illinois, have crept northward, favoured by the mild influence of the lake winds through the central and western part, of the Lower Peninsula often beyond the middle. The flora as detailed shows 1634 species. The composites claim the larger number of species—182—about one-ninth of all. Sedges follow with 176 species; Grasses, 139; Rosaceæ, 61; Leguminosæ, 55; Scrophulariaceæ, 46; Umbelliferæ, 27. Of the 165 species of trees and shrubs about twenty are valuable for their timber. About twenty species of woody and herbaceous native climbers are frequent, and some seem worthy of cultivation. The arrangement followed is that of the fifth edition of “Gray's Manual,” and a coloured map of Michigan is annexed.
Catalogue of the Phænogamous and Vascular Cryptogamous Plants of Michigan—Indigenous, Naturalised and Adventive.
By Chas. F. Wheeler Erwin F. Smith. (Lansing: George and Co., 1881.)
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Catalogue of the Phænogamous and Vascular Cryptogamous Plants of Michigan—Indigenous, Naturalised and Adventive . Nature 25, 196 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/025196a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/025196a0