Excerpt from Flora of Lancaster County: Being Descriptions of the Seed-Plants Growing Naturally in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

The list referred to above forms the basis of the present flora. Numerous additional species have been collected in the county by the authors of this volume and by their many associates and correspondents. Specimens of these species have been widely distributed, but the more complete sets occur in the herbarium of the new'york Botanical Garden, the herbarium of Franklin and Marshall College, the herbarium of J. J. Carter, the herbarium of the Field Museum of Natural History, the her barium of A. A. Heller, and the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. All records of species on the following pages are based on specimens collected in the county.

Lancaster County comprises almost 1000 square miles. Its extreme width, east and west is 47 miles, its extreme length, north and south, 41 miles. It lies southeast of the Appalachian Mountain System. There are no considerable altitudes attained by its hills, but the surface is quite diversified. Rolling hills and winding streams are numerous. The latter flow, without exception, either directly or indirectly into the Susquehanna River. The Susquehanna runs along the western boundary Of the county for a distance of more than 40 miles, and for over half of this distance it passes through a most picturesque canon with steep sides and wild lateral branches. This cahon has a southern exposure, and plants of a typically more southern flora have here made themselves at home. On the other hand, plants of a typically more northern flora are found in the cool Sphagnum swamps among the hills of both the northern and the southern parts of the county. These two somewhat extraneous elements, together with the plants typical Of the greater part of our area and the contiguous territory, comprise a flora of more than ordinary interest and diversity.

The county is divided by its main geological formations into three topographical or geographical belts or zones. They are: (1) a northern belt of sandstones and shales, (2) a middle belt of limestones, and (3) a southern belt of schists. On the one hand, all three belts contain trap-dikes or outcrops of trap rock. On the other, the sandstones and shales are uninterrupted, except for a bay of limestone prolonged northward from the middle belt; the uniformity of the limestones is broken mainly by several small outcrops of quartzite, while the schists contain some small projections of limestone at the northern edge and several outcrops of serpentine at the southern end.

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