Title: Contributions from the Botanical Laboratory, vol. 11
Identifier: contributionsfro11univ (find matches)
Year: 1934 (1930s)
Authors: University of Pennsylvania. Botanical Laboratory; University of Pennsylvania. Morris Arboretum
Subjects: Botany; Botany
Publisher: Philadelphia : (s. n. )
Contributing Library: Penn State University
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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dense growths of Sarracenia purpurea extended. These varied in colour from rich crimson in sunny places to greenish-crimson or ahnost green in the shade, while their large pitchers bordered the shore often in continuous masses to a width of from two to frequently ten or even twelve feet. They produced a beautiful colour effect against the sparkling water and the tall cedar woods beyond, which anchored their roots among those of the Sarracenias. The timetable indicated that a "flag station/' Davenport, had just been passed, and that Whitings was five and a quarter miles ahead in the direction of Camden and Philadelphia. Needless to say, the writer resolved to visit so attractive a locality and to explore its riches. This was done about three weeks later when staying at Island Heights, a village about three miles east from Toms River. Around the lake on every side stretched undulating, sandy expanses of typical pine barrens soil on which grew a flora eminently characteristic of that region. This will be described later by the second author. But, looking westward along the railroad for about three hundred yards, the desired locality seemed to be in view, for both sides of the track were bordered by tall growths of the white swamp cedar or cypress (Chamaecyparis thyoides or C. sphaeroidea) which suggested swamp or even lake expanses. On nearer approach it was found that the railway had been carried over a bridge, beneath which flowed a stream whose waters were of the typical pine barrens yellow-brown tint. The stream issued from a pond or small lake on the left, which, after the bridge was crossed, gradually came into full view as an obliquely extended expanse of water. This was almost wholly encircled by tall growths of the white cedar whose trunks grew in the shallow water or in the shaded bordering sphagnum margin. This shaded area reached from ten to fifteen feet from the edge of the pond. A wide recess or bay had formed for about twenty feet to the left of the outlet, and here a striking scene was visible from our high vantage ground on the railroad. A few snags had drifted down and accumulated over the waters of this bay, in part submerged, in part exposed. These had entangled great beds of the purple bladderwort (Utricularia purpurea), whose floating masses formed a sheet of lavender-purple bloom. Along the moist sides of the logs or spreading over the sandy bay-shore were abundant patches of Drosera rotundifolia and D. intermedia. As the sketch-plan indicates, the lake, fully a third of a mile long, was of irregular and sinuous outline, its median line being a curve that extended from the out-flowing stream upward to where the lake again contracted into a gently moving and largely sphagnum-bestrewn current continuing for miles to the westward. From a study of the entire lake, as well as of its inlet and outlet areas, its history was evidently somewhat as follows. Originally a small continuous stream that arose in the higher moist lands near Whitings, it flowed for about two miles in a south-easterly direction, < t ¥ Y y 4 p ^i f 1 t % m « \- V 4) k 4' ', ^ ^. ♦ •
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