A study of six wetlands of the Bolivian Cloud Forest was undertaken from 1994 to 1997. Seventy-five species, in 29 families and 49 genera, were identified as being associated with wetland habitats in the Bolivian Cloud Forest. The flora was composed of a mixture of fairly common, ruderal species and of species typical of high Andean (alpine/Puna) aquatic systems. In contrast to the terrestrial flora of cloud forest habitats, these wetlands were found to contain few endemic or rare species. At the site level, it appeared that the wetlands could be characterized as species-poor relative to wetlands in most other Bolivian regions; however, this determination was confounded by a disproportionate number of ponds (a characteristically species-poor wetland type) among the cloud forest study sites. Floristic similarities (Sørensen's Index) between cloud forest study sites were relatively low; nevertheless, these systems were closely grouped in an ordination by Detrended Correspondence Analysis of 46 wetlands from throughout Bolivia. Regional-scale diversity comparisons were confounded by the inability to confidently estimate the area of inundated habitat in the Bolivian Cloud Forest. However, it appeared that diversity in the cloud forest wetlands was substantially lower than that of terrestrial cloud forest habitats. Likewise, it appeared that the Bolivian Cloud Forest wetland flora was species-poor relative to wetland floras of other Bolivian regions. Floristic similarities were low between the Bolivian Cloud Forest and other regions within Bolivia and in various South and Central American montane regions. An ordination of the regional data suggested that the Bolivian Cloud Forest wetland flora was most closely associated with the other two Bolivian montane regions included in this analysis.

An inventory of the bryophyte flora of Mt. Everett and vicinity, southwestern Massachusetts, a 795 m mountain with an unusual dwarf Pinus rigida (pitch pine) summit forest, produced records for 109 mosses and 45 liverworts (153 species and one variety). The summit pine vegetation contained some bryophytes known to occur in lowland pitch pine forest elsewhere in the northeastern United States, but no species unique to this vegetation type. Some species more characteristic of higher elevation mountains with red spruce-balsam fir forest in the northeastern United States were present in the summit and subsummit areas of Mt. Everett, especially the latter. These azonal northern bryophytes may be descendents of populations of species that were more abundant in the past. Species richness on the mountain increased from summit to lowland, and the subsummit area contained more species than the summit forest area. Substantial differences exist between the bryofloras of Mt. Everett and Mt. Greylock, Massachusetts, 70 km to the north, reflecting edaphic and climatic dissimilarities between the two areas. Bryum flaccidum, Plagiomnium medium, Pseudotaxiphyllum distichaceum, and Sphagnum quinquefarium, on the basis of collections from Mt. Everett and vicinity, are added to the flora of Massachusetts.

Sporocladopsis jackii is a new species of green seaweed from eastern Canada and Maine. The species is abundant in late summer and is a conspicuous part of the epizoic flora on living shells of the mud snail, Ilyanassa obsoleta. The alga comprises a densely packed, branched filamentous base from which arise numerous unbranched to sparsely branched erect free axes. Multicellular attenuate hairs are rare to common and terminal on erect axes. Sporangia are clavate, terminal or lateral, usually borne singly, and produced abundantly in summer. Prior floristic accounts from eastern North America may have included S. jackii under the name Pilinia rimosa, now known to refer to a phaeophyte. Pulse amplitude modulation fluorometry of chlorophyll fluorescence (Phyto-PAM) for pigment analysis confirm microscopic observations of the communities living on snails as consisting of primarily Cyanobacteria and Chlorophyta.

Interspecific relationships of Betula remain elusive, making it difficult to examine morphological diversification and historical biogeography of the genus. In this study, sequences of the internal transcribed spacer region of nuclear ribosomal DNA were used to estimate relationships within Betula. Subgenera and sections or subsections, as traditionally circumscribed, are not monophyletic. Morphological characters traditionally used to categorize major groupings of Betula may have independently evolved more than once, including the shrubby habit and racemose female catkin arrangement. Betula maximowicziana is not united with other species of section Betulaster, which is unique in having a racemose female catkin arrangement and poorly developed side lobes of bracts. However, Betula nigra of section Eubetula falls within section Betulaster. Three biogeographic disjunctions are recognized in Betula, two between eastern Asia and eastern North America (B. costata–B. alleghaniensis and B. alnoides–B. nigra) and one between central Asia and eastern North America (B. medwediewi–B. lenta). Our results support the closer affinity of B. uber, which is an endangered species in eastern North America, to B. lenta than to B. alleghaniensis. Nonetheless, interspecific relationships of Betula are generally weakly supported due to the small number of informative characters of the DNA region, and more data are needed to further test the hypotheses.

Long-term reassessment of floristic diversity in created wetlands is needed to gain an understanding of how wetlands created for mitigation mature floristically. A thorough floristic survey of a 17-year old created wetland in southeastern New Hampshire was conducted to compare current data to a 1992 floristic study of the site. The flora in 2002 included 110 species, whereas the total number of species recorded in 1992 was 101. Not only had diversity increased, but the flora had changed in a 10-year span; the floristic lists of the two years showed 79 shared species. Sørensen's Index of Similarity revealed a floristic similarity of 75%. Carex atherodes, new to the site in 2002, represents a new state record for New Hampshire. As there is a great need for long-term evaluation of mitigation wetlands, these data contribute toward a better understanding of the maturation of created wetlands, and can be used to make more meaningful floristic comparisons with natural wetlands and evaluate the long term success of wetland mitigation projects.