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I had figured Mary was using "Northumberland Coastal Plain" in the context it is used by Parks Canada & others, not in reference to the "Coastal Plain Flora", which she has confirmed (below, as posted to NatureNS) The term "Northumberland Coastal Plain" applies to a physiographic unit in Ag Canada's Ecoregions and Ecodistricts system, see Ecoregions and Ecodistricts of Nova Scotia (Webb and Marshall, 2003): "The Atlantic Maritime Ecozone covers 210 507 km2 and includes all of New Brunswick , Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. It also covers Iles-de-Ia-Madeleine and the part of Quebec extending southwesterly from the Gaspe Peninsula through the Appalachian complex of eastern Quebec to the U.S. border south of Sherbrooke....The ecozone is dominated by the interior Appalachian Upland and the Northumberland Coastal Plain physiographic units. The uplands are composed of granite, gneiss, and other hard, crystalline rocks. This upland terrain is covered by glacial till. Humo-Ferric Podzols are the dominant soils. In the coastal lowland areas, Luvisolic and Podzolic soils have formed on surficial materials derived from the underlying sedimentary bedrock (e.g., sandstone, shale, and limestone)." I think the term has no intended phytogeographic relationship to the Atlantic Coastal Plain flora, commonly referred to in NS as our "Coastal Plain Flora", or "Nova Scotias Coastal Plain Flora" . (However there is some overlap in regard to disjunct distributions, see Majka et al. 2009 ZooKeys 22:347 ff) The website at http://www.speciesatrisk.ca/coastalplainflora/ gives a list of Nova Scotia's Atlantic coastal plain plant species at risk, which are mostly confined to SW Nova Scotia, and a complete list which includes some species that have spread well beyond SW Nova Scotia. The introductory section to The Flora of N.S.: Part 2 The Dicotyledons by Roland & Smith* in which they talk about the floral elements in Nova Scotia's flora still seems to be the best available overview of the origins of our flora; it includes a lengthy discussion of "THE SOUTHWESTERN FLORA". (It would be nice if this whole section (pp 279-311) were freely available on the NSIS website, also if it was updated - anyone interested?!!!) *Proceedings of the N.S. Institute of Science 26(4): 278-746, 1969, also available as The Flora Of Nova Scotia by Roland and Smith 1983, published by The N.S. Museum
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