Rare Or Endangered Plants

~ By Gardening Committee Members ~

Being our gardens are pretty much finished for the season in our Northern Regions we took a trip into cyber space to search out a rare or endangered plant that was in our own living area, geographically speaking and share what we discovered. The journey began like most journeys bathed in excitement of the experience yet to unfold and perhaps ended in arriving home with a little more knowledge than what we may have expected.

We hope you will learn along with us in continuing to read of just how much human influence matters, even when unaware :)

Aletha
The Grass Pink Orchid (Calopogon tuberosus) belongs to a group of terrestrial orchids of the family Orchidaceae and is an endangered species in Illinois due to habitat destruction. It is found in Northern or Central parts of the state, mostly in bog or wetland areas and survives well in sandy conditions. This orchid has a slender, long, stem that can reach from 1 to 2.5 feet in height and produces anywhere from 1 to 6 bright pink and fairly large flowers.

The Grass Pink Orchid of moist grassy meadows can be seen at Illinois Beach State Park north of Waukegan and occasionally found with the Snake-Mouth Orchid which has a delightful fragrance resembling the odor of fresh raspberries. June is the best month to see most native Orchids in bloom but our commonest kind, Ladies' Tresses, blooms in autumn.

All orchids have leaves with parallel veins like those of lilies and irises. Their flowers have three sepals and three petals; but one petal, the lowest, is out of all proportion to the others and is called the "lip.” This is the most obvious of all orchid peculiarities. This lip is actually the Upper petal which has been twisted halfway "round." It serves as a Landing strip, restaurant and signboard for bees. The orchid possesses an elaborate and foolproof system which insures that its sticky pollen is carried from one flower to another by insects. (Photo of this plant by Wikipedia)

Kythera Ann
When one imagines the Blue Ridge Mountains (aka Appalachian) where I live, the thought of carnivorous plants does not immediately leap to mind. But there are more species of trees here than anywhere else in the world! Of course that means that the plant, animal and insects are also the most varied :)

I first came to know about the carnivorous Mountain Sweet Pitcher plant (S. rubra ssp. Jonesii) which was added to the federal list of endangered species September 30, 1988 when I discovered that the tiny fruit flies are a pesky issue in the humid summer kitchens of where I live. To find out what to do about the beasties, without using chemicals, I talked to a local and discovered the beauty of the Mountain Sweet Pitcher! I have one potted that I put out daily and bring in at night to the kitchen. No more gnats or fruit flies, gotta love it!

Sarracenia jonesii feeds on and is fed upon by insects. Insects are lured by the sweet smelling nectar produced by the plants and enter the tubular pitchers. Once inside, they become trapped by downward pointing hairs and fall into the liquid in the bottom of the pitcher where they decompose. The minerals from the decomposed insects help to make up for the low nutrient levels of the normal pitcher plant habitat.

The Mountain Pitcher Plant naturally lives in peat rich soil such as bogs (nicely by water features you can build on your property too). The plant also is found near streams and granite rock faces along the Blue Ridge Divide. In the wild, turnabout is fair play and a number of moths eat the seeds, rhizomes, and leaves of the pitcher-plants. Other insects make use of the pitchers as habitat and live inside.

It is a very pretty plant with a great fragrance and it delightfully changes its appearance throughout the seasons. In spring, it produces orange tinted pitchers, which are accented by deep red flowers. In early fall, its pitchers turn copper. By early winter, the entire pitcher turns deep red. It is also a manageable size; it tends to be small, 8-12 inches in height if potted like mine. If planted outside, it can get to about two feet tall. Further, being a rhizome, like Hostas, simply separate the tuber to propagate a new plant. I find that easier than planting seeds, which it won't even produce for AT LEAST five years!

Sadly, of the sixteen historical populations of Mountain Sweet Pitcher, only ten exist today. Four of these places in the Appalachia where these wonderful plants naturally exist (that no one planted) are in the county I live in and the two adjoining counties. Many of the vanished populations were lost as a result of the destruction of their bogs due to changes in hydrology. The channelization of streams, which often precedes development or the conversion of forested land to agriculture, caused the bogs that once supported pitcher plant populations to dry out. The largest known population ever of these plants, about 60 acres, was bulldozed in the 1970's to make way for a golf course and country club! Furthermore, all populations in existence are on private land, putting them at the mercy of the whims of the land owners. (Photo of this plant is copyright free and provided by the USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database)

Julie
On many Sunday drives to the country I have often talked to my hubby about how dry and sparse the land is now compared to what it would have been in earlier days when it would have had so much more flora and fauna than it does now.

Often we would notice hardly any trees at all in between huge paddocks leaving no protection at all for them. The wind just comes along and blows all the seedlings away and the farmers wonder why although they are beginning to realize they should have had wind breaks which would have protected their wheat, barley or whatever they had grown.

Native trees and plants maintain oxygen levels, contribute to healthy water tables and provide food and shelter for humans and animals alike. Threats to Australian plants include, grazing, agriculture, roadworks, we now have the Ghan train going from Adelaide to Darwin which would have destroyed so much habitat along the way. There are new mines opening frequently and when they put up huge new housing developments all the undergrowth is removed.

Flora and fauna have lived through our droughts, fire and flood. They survive in refuge pockets where conditions are less severe than in other places. Now there are hardly any refuge pockets left for them to be able to survive and less than 1% is left of the original habitat.

The Wollemi Pine, provide us with a living link with the time of the dinosaurs. It is becoming endangered by humans visiting the area and walking on the seeds at the bottom of the tree. Today there are only 100 Mature Wollemi Pines left in all of Australia.

It's a terrible shame that these rare and almost extinct trees will no longer exist if people don't treat them with the respect they deserve. We know better now about ecology and should be doing our utmost to protect them. We've done the damage in the past it's the future I feel more frightened of for our grandchildren and their children. What will it be like for them? (Reference: http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/science/wollemi_pine)(Photo of this plant by Wikipedia)

Sue
Changes in farming practices and loss of traditional hedgerows have had a major impact on wild flowers so that plants like the cowslip and many others are in decline. This is very sad as there is nothing more pleasing than noting the wildflowers emerging in spring, casting away the shadows of winter like the aconites, celandine and wild anemones; the primroses; foxgloves and the bluebell.

But there are other hazards for our wild plants and one particularly affected is the bluebell. The traditional broad leafed woodland close to our house abound with bluebells which cast a beautiful, sweet smelling blue carpet in May and are a true harbinger of summer.

While abundant, the bluebell is threatened by its cultivated cousins. Cross fertilization between these and the native bluebell are threatening its genetic purity and could destroy the wild type completely.

Organizations such as the Royal Horticultural society recommend avoiding use of bluebell cultivars in areas adjacent to natural bluebell woodland but it is largely "preaching to the converted". There are already cases where mixed genotype plants are superseding the native bluebell. We can only hope that "our" bluebell will survive. (Photo of this plant by Wikipedia)

Diane
The yellow Birch grows from eastern Canada and the Northern States around the Great Lakes region in abundance with half its growing season being in snow. What makes the Yellow Birch easy to identify is the gentle aromatic wintergreen scent of its inner bark and the yellowish tint to its outer paper-like bark.

The brown birch bore is the most serious insect pest of the yellow birch because it attacks both healthy and weak birches but it can complete its life cycle only in dead and drying wood. Mature and over mature trees left severely exposed are more subject to attack than trees in well stocked strands. Adult Bore deposit their eggs in bark crevices of upper branches. Grubs hatch in bore tunnels underneath the dying bark causing the tops to dye first moving slowly downward taking 2 to 3 years to die. The gypsy moth and caterpillar are also a threat to the Yellow Birch. (Photo of this plant by Wikipedia)

Gardnbee
One plant that I love is our purple, yellow and white Dwarf Iris and because of this when I was searching for endangered plants and saw the Dwarf Lake Iris (l. lacustris) listed I honed in on it to find out more. It is a rare and threatened miniature species of Iris that grow wild nowhere else in the world but along the northern shoreline of the Grate Lakes Region; the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin; formerly near Milwaukee; Manitoulin Island and the Bruce Peninsula within the Province of Ontario, Canada.

As with our domestic Dwarf Iris they bloom from about the middle of May into early mid June and are similar in growth habit with regard to being perennial. The Iris lacustris however is tinier than our domestic dwarf Iris and is lower growing than ours with narrower leaves and creeping rhizomes although both species rhizomes are shallow placed.

The Dwarf Lake Iris produces gorgeous summer blue flowers that reach about two inches in height and grows in thin soil found over limestone, bedrock or moist sands and gravels. It grows very well in full sunlight on moist sites but prefers the light dappled shade of white Cedar. Flowering best in semi-open habitats like the long narrow strips of land that border high-water lines or large flat expanses behind open dunes they can also be found inhabiting old beach ridges of the former shores of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan whose changing water levels serve to create new areas for expanded growth.

Over the years Habitat of the Dwarf Lake Iris has been drastically reduced due to shoreline development for residential or vacation homes; the widening of roads; the use of chemical sprays to control roadway growth; the use of salt for winter road maintenance and the destruction caused by of off-highway vehicles.

The Dwarf Lake Iris was thankfully designated and listed a threatened species in 1998 under the Federal Endangered Species Act and although it is known to be offered for sale commercially; collection from wild populations most certainly cause a negative affect to this species longevity and continued growth not to mention that doing so is in violation of Federal, State and Provincial laws throughout its range. (Reference: Department of Natural Resources, Michigan State Government) (Photo Courtesy of: Charles and Diane Peirce http://homepage.mac.com/chpeirce/wildflowers/index.html)

         

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