The Botany of the Rocky Mountain Region

Abstract

THE object of this manual, as stated in the preface, is to do for the range of country in which the plants it describes are found, what has for a long time been so admirably done for the North-Eastern States of the Union by Asa Gray's manual. It hence affords a means of comparison between two distant areas, each of such considerable dimensions as to throw much light on the flora of temperate North America. And not only with the flora of the Eastern States does it compare, for, the botany of the great Western area included in California having also been recently worked out, the three floras together enable a fairly accurate estimate to be formed the nature and extent of the vegetation of the middle regions of temperate North America from ocean. Thus Gray's manual takes in the States between the Atlantic and Mississippi, which lie north of Tennessee and North Carolina; that is, approximately between lats. 361/2 ° and 46° N., and is essentially the vegetation a wooded region with high-lands towards the coast. The Rocky Mountain manual occupies a rather smaller area, comprising the States of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Western Dakota, Western Nebraska, and Western Kansas. Its southern and northern limits are on the same parallel as those of Gray's “Flora,” and its eastern limits (the 100th meridian)is nearly parallel to and as long as Gray's western, and distant from it about 400 miles. Its western frontier is a very irregular one, following the north-western and south-eastern direction of the great mountain plateau: and borders the Pacific States of Washington and Oregon, and the interior ones of Nevada and Utah. It is essentially an Alpine and prairie vegetation; probably most or all of it is above 4000 feet of elevation, with mountains attaining a maximum of over 14,000 feet (Mount Gray). The Californian flora, again, does not occupy half the area of either of the others. It extends rather further south, to lat. 35°, and only to 45° N. Though only 200 miles in average breadth, it is infinitely richer than both the others combined, having a mountain flora—the Sierra Nevada—throughout the length of its eastern boundary, a coast flora along the Pacific, a hill flota along a coast range, and a valley flora between the latter and the Sierra Nevada.

Manual of the Botany of the Rocky Mountain Region, from New Mexico to the British Boundary.

By John M. Coulter., Professor of Botany in the Wabash College. (New York and Chicago: Ivison, Blakeman Taylor, and Co, 1885.)