BOTANICAL EVALUATION OF THE GOAT ISLAND COMPLEX, NIAGARA FALLS, NEW YORK
P. M. Eckel
Buffalo Museum of Science
1020 Humboldt Pkwy
Buffalo, NY 14211 U.S.A.
www.buffalomuseumofscience.org

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THE DIARY OF SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER
(Unpublished journal, copyright, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Chicago to Niagara Falls, Sept. 19, 1877)

In 1877, Drs. Joseph Dalton Hooker and Asa Gray were returning east after conducting an expedition to study the flora of western North America. Niagara Falls lay on their eastward route and they decided to make a visit. Gray had explored the island some thirty years earlier in 1831 and had noted certain unusual plant species growing there, specimens of which he had sent to John Torrey and others.

According to Hooker's travel and botanical diary, he and Gray started their day, on September 19, 1877 on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. After some remarks upon the Canadian landscape and a comment on the poor quality of wine derived from Vitis labrusca (called Concord and Isabella), and from native grapes of the Eastern United States generally, Hooker crossed the Niagara River and stopped at the Cataract Hotel in Niagara Falls, New York. After having established themselves, they proceeded to Goat Island. Hooker then listed in his diary a number of botanical species that he, in the company of Dr. Gray, encountered on the island. It is an accurate list, as Dr. Gray, who verified his identifications, was the leading expert on the flora of North America, having published on the subject with John Torrey, of New York. He had, in 1848, issued the first edition of his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States which has remained, with revisions, to the present day, one of the several major manuals of the flora of that region.

The next day, Hooker went back to Canada (the "British side") to enjoy the prospect and visit the Museum there. By the 21st he was well on his way east to Albany.

Less than a year later (April 12, 1878), Hooker gave a lecture to the Royal Institution of Great Britain entitled "The distribution of the North American Flora" (Turrill, 1953). In addition to discussing the flora of the Arctic in the New World and of Canada (as the British North-American flora), Hooker referred to the Great Eastern Forest region of the United States flora. This floristic region, which extends "from the Atlantic to beyond the Mississippi" to the Great Plains, is "noteworthy for the number of kinds especially of deciduous trees and shrubs...even on a very limited area." "Of these I shall select two examples from my Journal." One of these was on the Missouri River near St. Louis where "in little more than half an hour, and less than a mile's walk, I saw forty kinds of timber trees ...." "The other example was afforded me by Goat Island, which ... covers less ground than Kew Gardens. Here the vegetation was more boreal and less varied than in Missouri; but with Dr. Gray's aid I counted thirty kinds of trees, of which three were oaks and three poplars, together with nearly twenty different shrubs." "I know of no temperate region of the globe in which any approach to this aggregation of different trees and shrubs could be seen in such limited areas, and perhaps no tropical one could afford a parallel" (Turrill, 1953).

It is this rich eastern and north-eastern flora that inspired Asa Gray's postulation of the close relationship of the East American with East Asiatic floras - especially with that of Japan: two hundred and thirty species are shared and nearly three hundred and fifty were closely related. This correspondence was not true for the floras of the Plains and the Rocky Mountains "and still less, perhaps, in regions farther west."

Hooker's celebration of the richness of the flora of Goat Island, as indicative of the richness of the eastern North American forest flora, seems to be the source of an idea repeated over and over again in a variety of diverse publications. "The eminent English botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker, has said that he found upon Goat Island a greater variety of vegetation within a given space than anywhere in Europe, or east of the Sierras, in America; and the first of American botanists, Dr. Asa Gray, has repeated the statement" (Olmsted in Gardner, 1880 and paraphrased by Porter, 1900). Frederick Law Olmsted goes on to say "I have followed the Appalachian chain almost from end to end, and traveled on horseback ... over four thousand miles of the most promising parts of the continent without finding elsewhere the same quality of forest beauty which was once abundant about the falls, and which is still to be observed in those parts of Goat island where the original growth of trees and shrubs has not been disturbed ..." (Gardner, 1880). An echo of Hooker's observations appears in a work of David F. Day's (1901) "It would be very difficult to find within another territory, so restricted in its limits, so great a diversity of trees and shrubs," backed up here with abundant statistics, however: of the 170 species of trees and shrubs known from western New York, 140 occur on "Goat Island and the immediate vicinity of the river near the Falls."

Other individuals have also commented on the richness of the flora. One of Agassiz's scholars on the Lake Superior trip prior to 1850 commented that the "variety of trees and shrubs on these islands is remarkable" (Agassiz, 1850), where followed, by example, a list of the trees growing on one of the tiny islands in the American channel (Ship Island). It was Hooker, however, who attempted to substantiate this impression, if only for his own interest, by producing a catalogue of plants on Goat Island.

The following list comes directly from the diary Hooker kept during his trip to North America, kindly lent as photocopy by Leanore Thompson, Assistant Librarian at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where Hooker's original diary is archived.

In all, Hooker tabulated 47 species of trees and shrubs, and 68 species of herbs: 59 species of dicots, and 9 of monocots. On a single September day there were listed 115 species of plants observed, with many species in the daisy family noted, particularly among the Aster's and Goldenrods (Solidago). Naturally this list excluded plants more conspicuous earlier in the spring and early summer.

Modern nomenclature, consistent with the species catalogue of this report, are included in square brackets where appropriate. Their common names used in the present text are included there as well. The species are presented below in alphabetical order, rather than in the order of Hooker's diary.