Forest and Heath: The Shaping of the Vegetation on Nantucket Island

Abstract

N antucket has long been recognized for its unique flora. Early botanists made frequent trips to the island, located twenty-two miles south of Cape Cod (figure1), and described severalnew speciesfrom their collections! Many species continue to be found that are scarce or absent elsewhere in New England." Overall, Nantucket's thirty-two thousand acres contain more rare species than most other areas of similar size in the northeastern United States." Many of these plants grow in the open coastal heathlands and sand plain grasslands that cover much of the rolling moraines and outwash plains of the island.