They must have done some serious transplantin' as prickly pears are found
all across the Great Lakes region in sandy and near-desert areas, including
the Adirondacks and some spots across New England and if I am not mistaken
into the far reaches of Maine.  I always wondered if they were a remnant of
some ancient desert ecosystem.  Near my home town in central New York is a
remnant Black Spruce forest which is a couple hundred miles north of the
next nearest.  Also, look at the incredibly disperse range of the
Harts-tongue fern in North America, about ten places Michigan, Tennesee and
New York, go figure (although that is probably due to depredations by
humans and not transport and planting)

        Dan W.




At 11:31 PM 3/11/01 -0600, you wrote:
> Ohio is generally considered a cactus-free state but 70 years ago E. L..
>Moseley suggested that occurrences of Opuntia rafinesquii in the Sandusky
>region and across Lake Erie on Point Pelle were due to its having been
>carried eastward by the Indians.
>
>
> Moseley, Edwin L.
>      Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science Arts and Letters
>             p. 169-172.
>
> Jim Murphy
> [log in to unmask]
>
> At 05:35 PM 3/11/01 -0500, Ron May wrote:
> Botany:
>
> About 25 years ago, I directed survey crews over a 6-square mile area known
> to the California Bureau of Land Management as Table Mountain. There are 208
> recorded prehistoric sites out there, which span the past 1500 years. There
> are also historic mines, camps, and dumps. But, one of my research issues
> involved recovery of plant specimens, pressing them, identification, and
> testing to see if some of the plants were artificially brought into the area
> by prehistoric people for horticulture. We documented several varieties of
> nightshade in rockshelters, which admittedly could have been dropped from
> medicine bags. The best evidence were patches of Opuntia cactus planted at
> elevations 1000 feet higher than normal. These were directly in the
center of
> the prehistoric camps. They exist in protohistoric camps too. Thus, I
believe
> Opuntia is another example of archaeobotany.
>
> Ron May
> Legacy 106, Inc.
>