A Review of Freshwater Phycological Research in Southeastern United States

The real beginning in research on freshwater algae of southeastern United States, although incidental reports had been made previously, was the trip which Jacob Bailey took for his health during the winter of 1849-50. This professor at the United States Military Academy enjoyed his trip and related the pleasure of being in the collecting grounds of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida in a personal chatty manner that has at some time since then disappeared from scientific literature. His microscopical observations, published in the second volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 1851, included not only freshwater forms, but marine as well and some organisms that are now considered definitely of the animal kingdom. From sixty sites, only a half dozen filamentous forms were listed under the name “Algae”, but there were over one hundred desmids and about the same number of diatoms, less than a quarter of which were freshwater forms.