THE ZONES of plant life closely correspond to the State’s geographic divisions, though variations in wind exposure, moisture, and soil composition may destroy zonal uniformity. There are 149 species of trees, of which 116 are native, 33 naturalized, and 3 borrowed from neighboring States; virgin timber exists in relatively small patches in the remote parts of the Adirondacks. The list of flowering plants and ferns, briefly annotated in a report of the State botanist, occupies about 750 octavo pages.
The zone of lowest altitude and latitude borders Long Island Sound in southern Westchester County and Long Island, and has a native flora characterized by post and willow oak, short leaf pine, laurel magnolia, sweet gum, and hop trees.
The Hudson Valley, the lower Mohawk Valley, the Lake Ontario Plain, and the deeper, protected valleys of the Allegheny Plateau comprise a floral zone characterized by nut-bearing trees like oaks, hickories, and chestnut. Conifers are restricted to red cedar and the white pine and hemlock survivors of the lumbering spree. The chestnuts are second-growth immature trees or, more rarely, survivors of the blight which came as an undesirable alien into New York harbor. The American elm is a common and graceful component of valley woodlots and hedgerows. Laurel, dogwood, basswood, laburnum, tulip, and azalea, though much less common, are also at home in these valleys.
The Taconic foothills in the east, the broad surface of the Allegheny Plateau, and a wide circle around the Adirondacks are characterized by about 20 tree species. White pine and hemlock, once common, are now all but gone. Maples, beeches, birches, basswood, and white oak are widespread and commercially valuable.
The bulk of the Adirondacks, the Tug Hill Plateau, the Catskills, and the Taconic summits exhibit a tree flora in which red and black spruce, balsam fir, and mountain ash, rarely found in the lower zone, are most important. Maples, birches, and beech, as well as white pine and hemlock, persist.
The Catskill summits and the Adirondack slopes below the timber line are characterized by red, white, and black spruce, balsam fir, paper birch, and mountain ash. Balsam and spruce, interspersed with contrasting white birch, beautify the Adirondacks.
Only hardy plants of the Alpine zone exist above the Adirondack timber line. Lichens, mosses, bearberry willow, glandular birch, black crowberry, Labrador tea, and Lapland rose bay form thickets where soil, slope, and sun permit. Virgin forests of the Adirondack region are mainly of red spruce, beech, yellow birch, striped maple, mountain maple, witch hobble, and shield fern. The spruce and birch often exceed 80 feet in height, towering over a carpet of rotting windfalls, leaves, and needles.
In forest areas many species of flowering plants pop up where light and rainfall permit. Wild sarsaparilla, Solomon’s seal, bunchberry, star flower, trillium, enchanter’s nightshade, sweet-scented bedstraw, Indian pipe, and goldthread are not uncommon. Over the greater part of the State, meadow flowers often form pied blankets acres in extent. Dandelions, cut as weeds from lawns, grow a foot tall on road shoulders, framing black macadam in borders of gold. Queen Anne’s lace, devil’s paint brush, white daisy, and black-eyed Susan bloom concurrently in bottom valleys, forming a tapestry of green, white, yellow, and orange. Buttercups are blended in grassy openings with violets, strawberry blooms, and clover. Goldenrod and wild rose (the State flower) hug the borders of woodlots. Cattails and blue flag thrive in tidal flats of the Hudson estuary; rushes, cut for chair bottoms, cover acres of the Finger Lakes shallows; and alders grow at the water’s edge between the white and yellow water lilies and the dry shores of Adirondack lakes.
State and private planting have introduced a number of trees and plants. Foreign spruce, pine, and larch are replacing native trees on submarginal lands. Crack, white, and weeping willow, Lombardy and black poplar, European elm, mulberry, locust, Chinese ailanthus, Norway maple, horse chestnut, and catalpa thrive in New York soil and climate. The sequoia in Aurora and the cypress and cactus in Hudson, far from native climates, are surprisingly sturdy exotics. The black walnut stripped from rich valley bottoms of the lower zones for midnineteenth-century furniture factories is slowly being replaced by black walnut from other States.
While southern counties show upper austral (southern) species of animals and northern counties show boreal (northern) species, the largest part of the State is a transition zone where northern and southern species not only overlap but occasionally crossbreed. The higher Adirondack peaks are characterized by fauna of Arctic affinities: small, hardy species that prefer cold, barren isolation. Though several species of the native fauna have become extinct or all but exterminated since white occupancy, many more exotic forms have been introduced and are rapidly becoming abundant.
The peccary, horse, mammoth, mastodon, and giant beaver of the Ice Age are known only as fossil remains. The American bison, which roamed eastward to the salt licks at Syracuse, disappeared before white settlement. The wild turkey was exterminated by the white man’s bullets. In 1871 the State legislature voted a $20 bounty on panthers and a $30 bounty on timber wolves, and the species disappeared. By 1900 the fur industry had all but exterminated the beaver; recent protective measures have fostered their increase to the point that their dams and reservoirs have become nuisances. The otter has been mercilessly slain. Mink, marten (sable), and fisher, sought for their rich brown fur, have dwindled in all but remote areas. Thoughtless gunners threatened many game bird species with extinction until conservation legislation was enforced. The Hudson River fishing industry of 50 years ago, abetted by stream pollution, reduced sturgeon, shad, and herring to noncommercial quantities. The wolverine was gone by 1811; elk have not been seen since 1840; and moose disappeared about 1860.
Introduced species that have gained firm foothold are Hungarian partridge, pheasant, English sparrow, European starling, a number of destructive insects and the praying mantis which feeds on them, numerous game fish, and the house rat, which came with European mercenaries during the Revolutionary War. Domestic cats, abandoned in mountain resorts and camps, have reverted to a wild state.
Rarely venturing out of the mountain, the Eastern black bear, weighing close to 500 pounds, is diminishing in number, though protected by law except for about one month in the late fall. The common deer is abundant in the State forests; only bucks may be shot during open season. While the Canada lynx is rare in the State, the wildcat still hides on the peaks of the Catskill Mountains, to which it gave its name, and in isolated Adirondack areas.
Classed as ‘vermin,’ the red fox ranges all over the State. Its southern cousin, the gray fox, joins it in the transition zone in a destructive hunt for rabbits, mice, and birds. Foxes may be taken at any time by any means, but traps are of little avail against this shrewdest of animals.
Whereas the varying hare or snowshoe rabbit is the common rabbit of the North Country, the cottontail, represented by several species, infests woods and fields of the lower zones. The larger hare is a recluse, but the cottontails invade kitchen gardens; both species are heavily preyed upon by foxes, cats, and hawks.
The porcupine is a not uncommon resident of the lower mountain zone. It will eat anything for a taste of salt, and even relishes glued paper cartons and varnish. Ranging through the State, the skunk is prized for its black and white lustrous fur, but is avoided because of its pungent scent.
Wherever burrowing is easy, but rarely in evergreen forest, the common and abundant woodchuck digs its hole with two exits. It greatly resembles an overfat prairie dog, but its appearance belies its speed and agility.
Rivaling the blue jay for excited chatter in Adirondack evergreen forests, the northern red squirrel ranges south to intermingle with its southern brothers and to fight with its southern cousin, the gray squirrel. Red squirrels seem to prefer wooded solitude, but the gray ones flourish in metropolitan cemeteries, parks, and backyards. Black squirrels are becoming numerous in the Southern Tier.
The southeastern chipmunk and the northeastern subspecies range throughout the State, building their nests in stone walls and rock ledges in or near thickets of dry, open woods. When they run they carry their tails vertically as signals of alarm; their striped backs afford protective coloration.
Widely distributed throughout the State, the muskrat prefers the watercourses of open country. Its fine, durable fur goes to market as ‘Hudson seal’; and its abundance is responsible for New York’s rank as second among the States in fur production.
The raccoon is rapidly multiplying as his more formidable enemy, the fisher, dwindles in number. A native of upland hardwood forests, the ‘coon’ often visits open lowlands to steal food, which it almost invariably washes. Its fur is of attractive shades of striped brown.
The fisher and its first cousin, the pine marten, are bearers of rich, brown fur (American sable). Uncontrolled slaughter has reduced their number to the extent that recent estimates allow five or fewer individuals per hundred square miles of Adirondack wilds. They are fierce little carnivores of the weasel family and prey on birds, mice, moles, and other small animals. The mink, represented by a northern and a southern species, is another tough, small carnivore of the weasel family. It snarls when opposed and its greed is often stronger than its caution.
From the point of view of numbers, the many species of mice hold the mammal record. The jumping or kangaroo mouse, about seven and one-half inches long, can jump more than a yard at a hop, and stores food in its squirrel-like cheek pouches. Several species of moles are prevalent; the star-nosed mole has the widest range. It infests soft, cool earth and often ruins golf greens with its tunnels, which it burrows just beneath the surface.
The birds of New York are divided into year-round residents, winter residents, summer residents, migratory species, and accidental visitors—in all, about 265 species. Among the year-round residents are the black-capped titmouse; that pestiferous import, the English sparrow; the common crow; the pileated, hairy, downy, and yellow-bellied woodpeckers; and the red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks. The most abundant summer residents are the robin, wood thrush, Wilson’s thrush, catbird, bluebird, house wren, Maryland yellow-throat, red start, barn swallow, bank swallow, yellow bird, yellow-winged sparrow, song sparrow, red-winged blackbird, meadow lark, orchard and Baltimore orioles, kingbird, pewee, chimney swift, belted kingfisher, cuckoo, red-headed woodpecker, ruffed grouse, kildeer, Virginia rail, bufflehead duck, and common tern.
Among amphibians, the common toad of the genus Bufo, two species of the frog genus Rana, the spotted newt, and three genera of salamanders, including the giant hellbender of the Allegheny River, are widely distributed. Ponds and puddles abound with polliwogs in the spring.
Highly adaptable to varied environments, the garter snake has no venom and visits city gardens as well as Adirondack second-growth forest wilds. The sluggish copperhead, although dangerously venomous, keeps to itself in its Catskill and Hudson Highlands habitat. The Adirondacks were once infested with rattlesnakes, but their number has steadily declined as a result of a relentless war by summer residents. Large, black, harmless water snakes are common; and fields abound with finger-long, green grass snakes. Milk snakes are abundant.
An enormous number of fish species inhabit New York waters, but many of them are exceedingly rare. Natural distribution has been considerably upset by the stocking of waters with species harmful to the native fish, by canalization, and by pollution. Eleven kinds are abundant in all watersheds: yellow perch, darters, common suckers, common bullhead, common sunfish, smallmouthed bass, rock bass, shiners, dace, brook trout, and blunt-nosed minnow.
The upper Hudson watershed has a fair abundance of whitefish, imported German brown trout, northern pike, wall-eyed pike or pike-perch, and northern sculpin. Lake Champlain has gar pike, smelt, whitefish, and largemouthed bass; and brown trout and eel live in tributaries. The Raquette River watershed of the northern Adirondacks shows typical cool-water species; the Oswegatchie and Black River watersheds have the barred killifish in addition. Within the Oswego watershed, including the Finger Lakes, cisco and lake trout prefer the deep lakes; chain pickerel live in the south; the Cayuga minnow keeps to weedy shallows along with the northern pike; brook, rainbow, and brown trout inhabit the cooler streams; and catfish, pike-perch, and Oswego bass are found in the weedy rivers.
Lake Erie contains several types of commercial fish, outstanding among which are cisco, sucker, trout-perch, white bass, yellow pike, blue pike, sauger, sheepshead, and ling. German carp, spotted catfish, and northern pike inhabit the larger western New York rivers. The smaller streams abound with dace, trout, bass, shiners, sunfish, and suckers. While bass and whitefish are common Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River fish, the rarer and larger muskellunge is principally sought by sportsmen.
The waters surrounding Long Island abound with a salt-water fauna, notably the flounder, horseshoe crab, and starfish, the last of which feeds on oysters and clams.
While amateur naturalists and professional entomologists wave nets at colorful butterflies and moths, serious efforts are being made to exterminate these pestiferous insects. Swamp drainage operations aim to exterminate the mosquito, although it carries no malaria. The praying mantis, lady beetles, and dragon flies augment man’s efforts by feeding on other insects. The gypsy moth of the southeastern counties, the Japanese beetle of the south, the widespread European cornborer, the widely distributed Dutch elm leaf beetle, the San Jose scale, and the Mexican bean beetle are all imported pests. The birch-leaf skeletonizer attacks particularly the white and gray birches.
