ARCTIC FLORA.
June 23d.
A bright day, with the thermometer at 47°, and light wind from the south. I have been out with my young assistants collecting plants and lichens. The rocks are almost everywhere covered with the latter,—one variety, orange in color, grows in immense patches, and gives a cheerful hue to the rocks, while another, the tripe de roche, which is still more abundant, gives a mournful look to the stony slopes which it covers. I have brought in a fine assortment of flowers, and it seems as if the plants are now mostly in bloom. They have blossomed several days earlier than at Van Rensselaer Harbor in 1854. I have had a bouquet of them in my cabin for many days past, and from the banks of the little lake behind the Observatory I can always replenish it at will.[1]*
- ↑ Not wishing to interrupt the text with details which would have little
interest for the general reader, I give here the complete flora (so far as a
most persistent effort could make it so) of the region northward from
Whale Sound. Most of the plants were found at Port Foulke. My collections
numbered several thousand specimens, which my kind friend, Mr.
Elias Durand, of Philadelphia, was good enough to assist me in arranging,
and afterward to classify in a paper for the "Proceedings" of the Academy
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, from which I give the following
list:—
1. Ranunculus nivalis.
2. Papaver nudicaule.
3. Hesperis Pallasii.
4. Draba Alpina.
5. Draba corymbosa.
6. Draba hirta.
7. Draba glacialas.
8. Draba rupestris.
9. Cochlearia officinalis.
10. Vesicaria Arctica.
11. Arenaria Arctica.
12. Stellaria humifusa.
13. Stellaria Stricta.
14. Cerastium Alpinum.
15. Silene acaulis.
16. Lychnis apetala.
17. Lychnis panciflora.
18. Dryas integrifolia.
19. Dryas octopetala.
20 Potentilla pulchella.
21. Potentilla nivalis.
22. Alchemilla vulgaris.
23. Saxifraga oppositifolia.
24. Saxifraga flagellaris.
25. Saxifraga cæspitosa.
26. Saxifraga rivularis.
27. Saxifraga tricuspidata.
28. Saxifraga cornua.
29. Saxifraga nivalis.
30. Leontodon palustre.
