THE VASCULAR FLORA OF THE VICINITY OF THE FALLS OF
NIAGARA
by Patricia M. Eckel
INTRODUCTION
This catalogue was originally developed in the late 1980's. It was mainly bibliographical in objective, although occasionally I added a taxon or note regarding the present flora. I had made no attempt to verify these reports by seeking out specimens on which the reports are based, or going to the localities named (if extant), or injecting data on the present flora. Future versions of this catalogue, however, will permit such an analysis.
The botany of the area around Niagara Falls is extraordinarily rich in all divisions of the plant kingdom, as the following list will demonstrate. It is also rich and perhaps unique in the historic contributions made by many botanists since Linnaeus' student Peter Kalm visited there in the eighteenth century.
The botanical resources of the Falls have been the focus of much local botanical interest in western New York and adjacent Canada. Most of the vouchers for botanical reports are housed in the Clinton Herbarium of the Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo, New York (BUF), being specimens from both sides of the river, and the herbarium of the Queen Victoria Park School of Horticulture in Niagara Falls, Ontario, which is restricted to collections made in Ontario. Specimens from Niagara Falls in all plant divisions can be found in many of Europe and America's leading institutions, and they will form the basis for future research.
This contribution is a checklist of the flora as reported or otherwise documented from the literature for the past two centuries. New and additional species records, however, for the gorge flora are included from recent collections and herbarium citations.
Niagara Falls constitutes the cataracts located in the Niagara River forming the territorial boundary between the United States and Canada. Both countries share the cataracts, of which there are two: the Canadian, or Horseshoe Falls, which is not entirely in Canadian territory, due to reduced water levels exposing Canadian land on the "American" side, and the American Falls, located entirely in the territorial United States.
Associated with these enormous waterfalls is a seven-mile gorge downstream, on average two hundred feet in depth, generally north-south trending, carved by the cataracts throughout a roughly ten-thousand year period constituting the time since the region became free of ice during the last, Wisconsin, glaciation. The cataracts began when the river fell over the great north-facing east-west limestone cuesta called the Niagara Escarpment, and the gorge is essentially a seven-mile invagination of this escarpment.
In association with the hydrology of the region, its erosional history and character, local areas of abandoned riverbed, abandoned terraces, coves formed as spillways, talus slopes and shorelines below the crest of the gorge, etc., there are a number of sites of concentrated botanical interest. Many of these sites have received geographic names, some have been set aside as State or Provincial parks, but they all owe their unique biological character to the development of the cataracts as they eroded there way generally southward.
The following important collecting sites are located in the United States: Goat Island, Three Sisters Islands, Luna Island, Terrapin Point, Cayuga Island, LaSalle, Lewiston, Whirlpool Woods, DeVeaux (College) Woods (once located in a village called Suspension Bridge), Brinker's Park, Devil's Hole, Whirlpool State Park, Prospect Park, the "old mill-race."
The following are located in Canada: Dufferin Islands, Niagara Glen (formerly known as Foster's Flats), Cedar Island (now part of the mainland), Table Rock, Queenston Heights, Chippewa (River and Town), Queenstown, Clifton, Crip's Eddy (at the base of the gorge), Wintergreen Flats (just above Niagara Glen), Maid-of-the-Mist landing, School for Apprentice Gardeners, Brock's Monument (located on Queenston Heights), Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park. Both sides of the river have wooded talus slopes facing the Whirlpool, which is located in the gorge several miles north of the cataracts. Additional stations on the periphery of this central area have been included for their biological interest.
Two islands in the Niagara River, above the cataracts, have been included in this study: Navy Island, Ontario, and Buckhorn Island in New York State.
Note that Cayuga Island is in New York State in the Niagara River above the falls. There are specimens from Cayuga which derive from a city by that name in the Municipality of Norfolk-Haldimand (South Cayuga also exists; Heimburger, 1955).
Species preceded by an asterisk (*) are not native to the Niagara Frontier Region, which is defined in past literature as the area of a circle with a 50-mile radius with the City of Buffalo, New York, at its center. Specimens cited are in the collections of the Clinton Herbarium, Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo, New York (BUF), the Queen Victoria Park School of Horticulture, Ontario, Canada (NFO), and the New York State Herbarium, Albany, New York (NYS). Species in brackets are adventives (and not considered capable of reproducing themselves beyond the lifetime of the population or individual(s) reported), or are otherwise considered doubtful members of the regional flora.
Nomenclature follows Zander and Pierce (1979), whose work is based on that of Gleason and Cronquist (1963). English names for plants derive primarily from Zander and Pierce (1979), Hamilton (1943), and other sources.
Land on the American side, including the islands at the brink of the falls and adjacent mainland, has been a New York State park for over a century (the Niagara Reservation). It was governed by a State Commission of the Niagara Reservation, which issued published annual reports for many decades of its early existence.
Commissioner's reports often provided supportive information about the flora, but were not primary sources of new reports for the flora. "Ann Rep Comm" is used as abbreviation for Annual Report of the Commissioners of the State Reservation; these always concern the year previous to the one in which the report was published and submitted to the Legislature. The Queen Victoria Park also had a Commission associated with it, but, as of the time of the present publication, this literature could not be consulted for this list. Much secondary literature, some of it archival, exists in Canadian institutions, and it is hoped in the years ahead such records might be consulted.
Two important archival sources for Niagara plant records refer to species occurring on Goat Island. The first is an unpublished private journal by Joseph Dalton Hooker, Kew Gardens for September 19, 1877 (kindly communicated by the library, Kew Gardens). The journal of George W. Clinton, starting in 1862, is unpublished and stored in the Research Library, Buffalo Museum of Science.
Recently a valuable resource for plant records for the Niagara area in Ontario has been brought to my attention by Tim Seburn of Fort Erie. It is a notebook of specimen records for Welland, Lincoln, Norfolk and Haldimand Counties in southeastern Ontario compiled but unpublished by Dr. Margaret Heimburger, lately of the University of Toronto. Dr. Soper has kindly informed me of the status of this manuscript, which will be eventually deposited in the Royal Botanical Gardens of Hamilton, Ontario. A photocopy has been made and is curated at the Clinton Herbarium (BUF).
Note that in specimen citations, Macoun may indicate specimens by James M. Macoun or John Macoun, especially if the specimen is curated at CAN (Ottawa).
Occasionally I have not been able to decipher Dr. Heimburger's handwriting and, in the case of more than one specimen, I have deleted the ones of doubtful interpretation. In no case does this involve the deletion of a species reference.
The information given here will form the basis for comparison of the past and present floras.
The revised (March, 1990) list of New York State protected native plants (6 NYCRR Part 193.3 was repealed and a new Part 193.3 adopted) was made pursuant to section 9-1503 of the Environmental Conservation Law. "The regulation gives land owners additional rights to prosecute collectors that take plants without permission. Violators of the regulation are subject to fines of $25 per plant illegally taken" (brochure: "Protected Native Plants, Revised March 1990, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation). Relevant species are indicated in this catalogue.
This research was made possible through the cooperation of the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, U.S.A., and the Niagara Parks Commission, Ontario, Canada. The author acknowledges a grant for 1986-87 from the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club in support of this research, and is grateful for the kind encouragement of the chapter members. In 1988, the author received a contract to develop a flora of Goat Island (Eckel, 1990) from the New York State Department of Parks, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged.
Grateful acknowledgment is also extended to Dr. Richard Zander, Curator of the Clinton Herbarium, who has generously assisted in all aspects of this study, and to Dr. William Crins of the New York State Museum, Albany, for assistance with citations in the genus Carex. Mr. Tim Seburn has provided indispensable information from the unpublished records of Dr. Margaret Heimburger, and Dr. Soper of Ottawa, Ontario, has provided a valuable background as to the status of that document. Ian MacDonald of Alberta kindly brought many botanical issues to mind in the representation of Canadian material. Other important contributors to this catalogue will be acknowledged in augmented versions to be posted in the future. Images of the flora are from the photographic collections of the Buffalo Museum of Science.
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