Some Sand Dune Plants from Longport, N. J.Author(s): JOSEPH CRAWFORDSource: Bartonia, No. 1 (1908), pp. 18-19Published by: Philadelphia Botanical ClubStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41848824 .

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Some Sand Dune Plants from Longport, N. J.

BY JOSEPH CRAWFORD

The little narrow tongue of land forming the southern ex- tremity of Absecon Beach, upon which the borough of Long- port is located, offers so little inducement to the average botanist that no one but an enforced inhabitant of that isolated portion of New Jersey would endeavor to inspect those dunes for rare plants, and never expect to get anything but the usual maritime forms throughout the season.

There is a narrow ridge of tree life along the bayside, begin- ning below Ventnor and ending abruptly at what was formerly called Oberon, but which is now, I believe, incorporated with Longport. From here to the inlet, a mile or more, there are no elevations but dunes, and no vegetation but beach grass and bay bush shrubbery, so to speak, or nothing larger than the beach plum.

At about Tenth Avenue building operations cease, and the original dunes thereabout possess considerable interest.

During the early summer of 1907, in company with Mr. Brown, I turned up great quantities of Rumex hastatulus, which had not previously been recorded from the State. It was scat- tered over this lower section, but did not occur above Tenth Avenue at Longport, nor on any other portion of the island, so far as I could discover.

About the middle of June this year, after housing my family in a cottage, I strolled again into this section, when my eyes were attracted to a short spike of greenish-yellow flowers, and what was my surprise to find it was Leptorchis Loesdii in flower here on the open, grassy sands, but what was a still greater surprise was to find associated with it the sand-beach adder's tongue, Ophioglossum armarium , growing without the shade even of big bushes. The colony was not as large as the one recently destroyed at Holly Beach, but was just as healthy.

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PHILADELPHIA BOTANICAL CLUB. 19

Another curious associate in this sand dune swale was Onoclea sensibili# , three or four very small plants, ranging from one to three inches including the stipe. There are no mature speci- mens of the plant on any part of the island so far as I could discover, and the spores must have been carried either across the inlet from Ocean City or from the mainland about Somers' Point. The apparent fixity of Longport building operations caused me to feel very comfortable regarding the preservation of these rare plants in the future, but my comfort was short-lived, as in less than two weeks a bungalow that had been enjoying precarious existence along the bay shore was transported bodily across the dunes midway to the sea and in close proximity to my choice spot. With such incidents occurring so near to our discoveries, I began to look the island over for other locations, and was rewarded by finding one other spot, in the vicinity of "the Elephant," where a few Ophioglossums were growing.

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