Cryptogamic botany / by J. Cardot [and others].

Date:: 1910

Credit: Cryptogamic botany / by J. Cardot [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$fern and moss; decaying skeletons may be the nidus of con- spicuous tufts of Tetraflodon or some related genus ; and other- wise naked cliffs are everywhere colored in soft but pleasing shades by their own lichen flora. Landing at almost any point in the forest region, one is so fully occupied with the task of clambering over or under fallen trunks and picking a precarious way through the undergrowth of devil’s club and other shrubbery, that it is not until he has forced his way some distance from the shore that he pauses to admire the immense trunks which surround him; and later still comes the realization that the ground is ankle-deep with mosses of the most luxuriant growth, which, saturated from the frequent rains, cover every moldering log, tapestry the living trunks, and hang in festoons from the branches, often so densely as to have smothered the less vigorous outer trees exposed to the wind and to occasional spray from the sea, in this respect recall- ing the effect sometimes produced in subtropical regions by the trailing Tillandsia^ on our New England coast, as in Alaska, by species of Usnea^ and in California by Ramalina^ of similar growth. In Alaska, however, the true mosses also produce this effect; and the most striking among them are two large species of Hylocomium {H. sj>lendens and H. loreuju). Nestling among the carpeting mosses and liverworts are many of the smaller and more delicate flowering plants of this region, as well as a few of the more tender fernworts ; and it is here that a large part of the fleshy fungi find the most favorable conditions for their growth. Whenever an opening occurs in the forest, the bogs of lower latitudes are reproduced, and the peat mosses {Sphagnum) ^ in considerable variety, assume their characteristic appearance and afford a nidus for the delicate cranberries, sundews, and butter- worts. With the ceasing of the forest begins a continuous wet prairie and bog region, which passes into the true tundra of the high north, frozen to a great depth and thawing for only a foot or two in the short summer, during which, however, its mossy cover- ing is enlivened by a blaze of flowers scarcely to be surpassed. In these open places ferns appear in greatest luxuriance, and a clamber up the mountain side at Sturgeon River Bay, on Kadiak Island, through wet lady-fern nearly waist-deep, is an ex-$

Cryptogamic botany / by J. Cardot [and others].

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