The Flora of Iowa - A Progress Report Based on Past Contributions

All one of the basic preliminaries in a plan for the ultimate preparation of a flora of Iowa, a survey of Iowa botanical literature has been undertaken in an attempt to assay the status of our knowledge of the state flora. Three aspects of this knowledge were kept in mind during the literature search: (a) general, regional and county floras, (b) the comparison of areas, and (c) taxonomic treatments of specific families and genera of plants. Only the ferns and the flowering plants were included in this literature survey, the mosses and liverworts having been recently summarized by Conard (1945a, 1945b) and the algae and fungi being considered as beyond the scope of this particular study. To obtain the data presented in the present paper, individual volumes of certain periodicals were examined for papers dealing with Iowa plants, a few unpublished theses in the Iowa State College library were consulted, and complete sets of the following publications were examined