Some Algae from Pope County, Illinois

Abstract

An opportunity to collect algae in southern Illinois presented itself in the summer of 1944 when I was stationed at Lake Glendale in Pope County, as a member of the Illinois State Natural History Survey. Lake Glendale is an 80 acre artificial lake, located in the Robbsville Recreational Area of the Shawnee National Forest. The dam creating the lake was completed and the valve impounding the water closed in the fall of 1939. During the spring of 1940, Survey crews stocked the lake with fish and planted a number of species of aquatic and semi-aquatic plants about the margin. By 1944 Typha and Potamogeton had occupied all of the shallows to a depth of one and one-half meters, and Cbara sejuncta A. Br. had colonized out to a depth of three meters. Collections of algae were made from open pools in the Typha beds, from entangled masses growing over the Potamogeton and Chara, from algal mats floating in open water, from growths on logs, stumps and mud in shallow water, from the stone and concrete work of the dam and spillways and from the sand and soil about the margin of the lake. A few collections were also made from a number of stock ponds that have been constructed on the lands of the University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station which is located in Pope County in the neighborhood of Lake Glendale. Collections from this source are not numerous as rapid sedimentation has rendered the edges of most of these ponds unapproachable. The Typha beds are very dense and have encroached to the inner limits of deep water and have thus reduced the favorable algal habitats. I would like to express my appreciation to Drs. T. H. Frison and G. W. Bennett of the Illinois Natural History Survey for their decision appointing me temporarily Assistant Aquatic Biologist for the summer of 1944. I am particularly grateful to Dr. D. F. Hansen who is in immediate charge of the Survey's Lake Glendale project, for his encouragement and help in the work which made possible these collections. The assistance of R. Webb of the Southern Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station in making the ponds on University property accessible is hereby acknowledged. The identification of the Myxophyceae was done by Dr. F. Drouet of the Chicago Natural History Museum and of the Characeae by F. K. Daily of the Herbarium of Butler University. The identification of the remaining specimens and the preparation of the manuscript was carried out in the botanical laboratories of Yale University with the aid of the Theresa Seessel Fellowship. Specimens of all of the collections listed have been deposited in Herbarium of the Illinois Natural History Survey, in the Cryptogamic Herbarium of the Chicago Natural History Museum and in my personal herbarium. Collections listed without specific locality data were taken from Lake Glendale. The arrangement of the genera follows the order of Smith's Fresh-Water Algae of the United States.