The Future of Southern Grasslands: Outline of a Strategy
I rode with Ann Johnson, plant ecologist with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI), and Wilson Baker, one of the finest all-round naturalists in north Florida, in Wilson’s pickup truck. The truck was loaded with books, boots, nets, binoculars, plant
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The Future of Southern Grasslands: Outline of a Strategy
Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life. Edward O. Wilson (1984)
I rode with Ann Johnson, plant ecologist with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI), and Wilson Baker, one of the finest all-round naturalists in north Florida, in Wilson’s pickup truck.The truck was loaded with books, boots, nets, binoculars, plant press, and other tools of the naturalist’s trade. It was late October 2010, deep in Jackson County in the Florida Panhandle. We traveled the dirt road up the hill, around the edge of large quarry, and then up a steeper hill through dense second-growth woods until the road became a narrow jeep trail and the trees that had fallen across it were too big to move out of the way. A chain saw was one tool Wilson hadn’t brought along.We parked and continued up the hill on foot, identifying plants along the way. It was cool enough for jackets, the early morning sun casting diagonal rays through the many layers of leaves. We were headed uphill to visit the largest and best remaining example of a Jackson glade, one of two subtypes of the upland glade natural community (the other is Gadsden glades, in Gadsden County). Wilson and Ann are experts on upland glades, one of the rarest natural communities in North America. We hadn’t walked long when we saw the opening ahead. I was excited. I had always wanted to visit Florida upland glades since first hearing about them years ago and then reading about them in the Guide to the Natural Communities 239 R.F. Noss, Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural History and Conservation, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-225-9_6, © 2013 Island Press
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Forgotten Grasslands of the South
of Florida on FNAI’s website.This is an endemic community, containing a mixture of plants distinct from any other. Most Jackson glades are dominated by black bogrush (Schoenus nigricans) in a mosaic with the much lower-growing poverty dropseed (Sporobolus vaginiflorus). Different sets of plant species are associated with black bogrush versus poverty dropseed. It is unexplained how black bogrush thrives on these dry upland sites; as noted in chapter 4, this is a wetland plant everywhere else across its unusual distribution. As we reached the clearing, we immediately knew something was wrong. My heart sank as walked into the sunlight. Fresh bulldozer tracks criss-crossed a large portion of the glade, exposing the shrink-swell clay, now dry and powdery from drought. In a small clump of plants remaining in the bulldozed area, we found an individual basal rosette of Coreopsis sp. nova, a species of Coreopsis (coreopsis or tickseed, in the family Asteraceae) new to science. Ann discovered this local endemic, which is somewhat similar to C. lanceolata; it has been found nowhere else but in a couple of these Jackson glades. Looking at this little plant surrounded by devastation, I realized that it could be driven extinct in the wild before it even gets
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