MADCapHorse - Missouri Botanical Garden

in recording the localities of rare plants. A strong amateur interest has also produced many new
discoveries of native and exotic species.
George W. Clinton, Superior Court Judge and first President of the Buffalo Society of
Natural Sciences published, in 1863, the first checklist of the “Plants of Buffalo and its Vicinity,”
which also included references to collections from Chautauqua County, Rochester in Monroe
County, and Portage in Livingston County. David F. Day, in 1882, determined the present areal
definition of the flora in his new checklist. In spite of its artificiality, this range circumscription
is superior to publications that restrict their field of study to political limits and treat only New
York or Ontario. The floral region includes one of the most phytogeographically interesting areas
in the Province of Ontario: the Niagara Peninsula (Regional Municipality of Niagara), as well as
all or most of the eight westernmost counties of New York State.
The extensive early history of collecting and reporting in the Niagara region is provided
by Zenkert (1934). It is well recognized that there has been a surge of botanical interest in the
region beginning in the early 1980s, especially with the establishment of the Niagara Frontier
Botanical Society in 1983 in Buffalo, New York. Many floristic reports and articles may be
found in the society's newsletter Clintonia. The present list is an attempt to summarize all
reports, to adjust the nomenclature of Zander and Pierce's (1979) list to the nomenclature of the
standard checklist of New York State plants by Richard Mitchell and Gordon Tucker (1997), and
to give local collectors a guide to what is already known and, by extension, what is yet to be
discovered in the ever-changing flora of our region.
The plant names of the Checklist are primarily based on specimens curated in the Clinton
Herbarium (BUF) of the Buffalo Museum of Science. The online Web database of the New York
Flora Association indicates that the Association’s distribution reports are based on specimens
and such reports are therefore cited here. Where a report occurs in literature only, the
bibliographic reference is given.
Botanical activity leading to additions to the Checklist has been one of the central
services that the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences has provided the people of the Niagara
Frontier Region, in New York and Ontario alike, since the time of the Civil War. The Checklist,
in its 1863, 1882-83, 1934, 1975, 1979, and present 2005 versions, has always guided and
stimulated botanical activity in the Niagara Region, and it is hoped this update will be no
exception.
P. M. Eckel, Research Scientist, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri
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